Philosophical Statements: Continuum Of Care
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PROGRAMS AND SERVICES MANUAL
POLICY
PHILOSOPHICAL STATEMENTS: CONTINUUM OF CARE
The AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) recognizes that HIV infection is a chronic and life threatening illness. This illness takes many different forms over many years. Every person experiences periods of illness and well-being over and over again. This means that a person's needs change throughout the course of infection with HIV. Therefore, the types of services required are many. To offer the best support to the person, these services need to be linked together. This linkage is called the continuum of care approach.
A continuum of care approach is based on a health promotion model. (See Philosophical Statements: Health Promotion, PS # 1-60.) This model understands that health is affected by all the situations in an individual's life. An individual's health is not just about physical illness but includes the physical, mental, social, spiritual, and economic pressures which are part of an individual's life. In this approach, all services support the person to develop his or her ability to make decisions and to access appropriate services.
ACT's programs and services provide for the needs of individuals at different stages on the continuum of care. ACT cannot offer everything that everyone needs. ACT plays an important role where a person needs a service not provided by ACT by "hooking up" the person with other agencies who do provide the appropriate services. Hooking up is sometimes the simple action of providing a telephone number; often, it requires ACT staff and volunteers to assist the person by advocating to secure appropriate services for the person. (See Advocacy, section 8, of this manual.)
