Person Centred Care: 6 Myths That Are Holding Your Team Back
Written by Stephanie Austin — Owner & Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training
Last reviewed: April 2026 | Next review: April 2027
If you’ve read our post on what person-centred care actually means in practice, you’ll know that the gap between knowing the phrase and living the principle is where most care services run into trouble.
What you might not know is just how much of that gap is created by myths. Not deliberate misinformation, just misunderstandings that have been passed around care settings for years, embedded in informal inductions, reinforced by time pressure, and rarely challenged until an inspection surfaces them.
So let’s challenge them now.
Quick Reference: The Myths at a Glance
| The Myth | The Reality |
| It’s just about asking what people want | It covers identity, history, capacity, rights, communication and consistency across the entire care relationship |
| It’s too time-consuming for a busy shift | Done properly, it reduces distress, resistance and rework — saving time over the long run |
| It only applies to people who can speak for themselves | It applies to everyone, with communication and advocacy adapted to individual need |
| A good care plan is enough | A plan is only as good as how it’s used — it must be reviewed, followed and treated as a live document |
| Being kind is the same thing | Kindness matters, but person-centred care also includes legal rights, capacity, independence and structured involvement |
| It’s a care home concept | It applies equally across domiciliary care, supported living, community settings and any regulated service in England |
Myth 1: Person-Centred Care Is Just About Asking What People Want
This one is by far the most common. And it makes sense that it persists, because asking people what they want is genuinely part of person-centred care. But it’s one part of a much larger picture.
Person-centred care involves understanding someone’s life history and what that means for how they experience support. It involves their cultural background, their communication preferences, their identity, their sense of self, and their legal rights. It means working in ways that maintain independence where possible, building genuine relationships rather than transactional ones, and creating care plans that reflect a real person rather than a set of clinical needs.
Asking “What do you want for lunch?” is a good start. It is not the destination.
| What the SCIE Says |
| The Social Care Institute for Excellence describes person-centred care as recognising people within the full context of their lives: not just focusing on health conditions, but understanding what is important to them, who they like to see, what they enjoy, and how they want to live. Read the full SCIE guidance on person-centred care planning |
Myth 2: It’s Too Time-Consuming for a Busy Shift
This is the one I hear most often from frontline workers, and I understand where it comes from. The reality of many shifts is pressure, short staffing, and a list of tasks that never quite gets shorter. In that context, “being person-centred” can feel like something you do when you have the luxury of time.
But here’s what the evidence actually shows. When care is genuinely person-centred, when people feel heard, respected, and in control of their experience, incidents of distress reduce. Resistance during personal care is less common. Anxiety is lower. Communication improves. All of those things take time when they go wrong. Getting it right in the first place is not slower. It’s an investment that pays back over the course of a shift.
The time-consuming version of person-centred care is the one that hasn’t been embedded into practice. Once it’s genuinely part of how a team works, it stops feeling like extra and starts feeling like normal.
Myth 3: It Only Applies to People Who Can Speak for Themselves
Not true, and this is an important one. Person-centred care applies to everyone receiving a service, regardless of their communication ability, cognitive capacity, or diagnosis. The approach adapts, but the principle doesn’t change.
For someone who is unable to express preferences verbally, person-centred care might mean using life history work, involving people who know the person well, observing non-verbal cues carefully, or ensuring an advocate is involved where appropriate. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 provides the framework for this. It requires that any decision made on behalf of someone who lacks capacity must be made in their best interests and must consider their wishes, values and beliefs, including evidence of what they would have wanted.
Communication differences do not reduce a person’s right to care, which reflects who they are. They require care workers to work harder and more creatively to understand and honour that.
Myth 4: If We Have a Care Plan, We’re Person-Centred
A care plan is a tool, not a certificate. Having one doesn’t automatically make the care person-centred, any more than having a recipe makes you a good cook.
CQC inspectors are trained to read care plans critically. They’re looking at whether the plan was developed with the person, not just for them. Whether it reflects actual preferences rather than assumed ones. Whether it’s been reviewed as needs have changed. Whether the care being delivered on the ground actually matches what the plan says.
A generic care plan, or one that hasn’t been updated in six months, or one that was written by a manager without meaningful input from the person it’s about, is not a person-centred care plan. It’s a compliance document that isn’t achieving compliance. Our Care Certificate Standard 5 post covers what genuinely person-centred care planning looks like in practice.
| What CQC Is Actually Looking For |
| Under Regulation 9, the CQC requires that care plans are produced collaboratively with the person, reviewed regularly, and that the person (or their representative) is actively involved in managing and reviewing their care. A plan produced without meaningful involvement, or one that hasn’t been reviewed when needs change, fails this standard regardless of how thorough it looks on paper. |
Myth 5: Being Kind and Caring Is the Same as Being Person-Centred
Kindness matters enormously. Nobody is saying otherwise. But kindness alone is not person-centred care, and conflating the two lets the structural stuff slide.
A care worker can be warm, patient and genuinely caring while still making decisions for people rather than with them. Still following the shift routine rather than the individual’s preferences. Still updating a care plan in the way that’s easiest for the team rather than most reflective of the person. Kindness is the foundation. Person-centred practice is the structure built on top of it.
The difference becomes clearest when there’s a tension between what the person wants and what the care team would prefer. Kindness might soften how that conversation goes. Person-centred practice determines the outcome.
Myth 6: Person-Centred Care Is a Care Home Concept
This one has never made much sense to me, but I hear it in domiciliary care settings with striking regularity. The assumption seems to be that because the person is in their own home, the context somehow makes the approach automatic.
But being in someone’s home doesn’t make care person-centred. It changes the environment, not the practice. Regulation 9 applies to all registered providers in England delivering regulated activities, including domiciliary care, supported living, and community-based services. The principles are identical, even if the practical application looks different.
Why These Myths Matter
None of the people who hold these beliefs are bad care workers. The myths persist because they offer shortcuts in a sector that is genuinely stretched, and because person-centred care is one of those concepts that can sound simple while being quietly complex.
But when these misconceptions go unchallenged, the impact is real. Care becomes more task-driven. Individuals feel less seen. Staff confidence in complex situations drops. And the gap between what the inspection shows and what daily care actually looks like starts to widen.
Good training addresses this directly. Not by adding more definitions to memorise, but by working through real scenarios, challenging the assumptions that have crept into practice, and helping people connect what they’re doing day-to-day to the person in front of them. For a full grounding in the standard, our Care Certificate UK guide and our dedicated post on person-centred care and what it means in practice are both good starting points.
| If you want to talk about how Prima Cura can help your team move from knowing the theory to genuinely practising it, we’re here. Contact us at info@primacuratraining.co.uk or call 0333 999 8783. |
