Food for Thought: Personalized Care

Nonotuck recently reflected on the importance of personalized care during a Food for Thought program open to staff across the state. The event featured Michael Lundquist, CEO of the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development, who joined Nonotuck leadership and staff in a thoughtful conversation about values, power, and what it truly means to support people in ways that honor dignity and autonomy.

Nonotuck CEO and President George H. Fleischner opened the session by welcoming participants and highlighting Michael’s decades of experience advancing the rights, inclusion, and economic opportunity of people with disabilities and other marginalized groups across more than 20 countries.

Michael emphasized that personalized work is frequently undermined by imbalances of power, particularly during planning meetings. He noted that these dynamics are often unconscious, yet deeply impactful. “People are unbelievably unconscious of this power dynamic,” he said, observing that when autonomy is offered without adequate support, “people who are vulnerable don’t always know how to use that power.” This, he argued, places a responsibility on supporters to be more self-aware, relational, and intentional in their roles.

Drawing on the work of Wolf Wolfensberger—a psychologist and influential disability rights thinker known for Social Role Valorization—Michael underscored the importance of naming these dynamics honestly. Wolfensberger argued that many of the harms experienced by people with disabilities are socially created through devaluation and unequal power, rather than disability itself. Quoting Wolfensberger, Michael noted that “truth is calling things by their true name,” and urged participants to recognize and interrupt moments when people are being overpowered or sidelined in the name of efficiency or professionalism.

As the conversation concluded, George Fleischner reflected on the session as “a nice exclamation point” to broader discussions about values and people. Michael closed by returning to the roots of personalized practice, cautioning against focusing solely on language while losing meaning. “How do we not lose the intent—the genuineness, the equality in our relationships?” he asked, framing the work not just as a professional skill, but as a human obligation. “We need to get better at this. As human beings, we need to get better.” 

In reflecting on these conversations more broadly, Nonotuck has also been examining the language we use to describe our work. The agency is intentionally moving away from the term person-centered and toward personalized, recognizing that personalized more clearly conveys a deeper, more active commitment to understanding and responding to each person’s unique needs, choices, and lived experience.

“When we talk about personalized support, we’re talking about something deeper than a framework or a set of words,” said George H. Fleischner, CEO and President of Nonotuck. “‘Personalized’ means taking the time to truly know each person—their history, their relationships, their hopes—and allowing that understanding to guide how we show up every day. It’s an active commitment to honoring people’s choices, dignity, and lived experience, not just in principle, but in practice.”