VALUES INCORPORATED
Training and Consultancy in Personal and Community Development

Text
Size

 A  A  A

A Good Life

Person Centred Planning is About Getting and Keeping a Good Life?

Person centred planning is about having a social life, friends, a contribution to make to others and meaningful days. These things are essential to everybody if we are to grow in confidence and be healthy and happy.

Person centred planning helps people to think about what matters most in their lives and gets family, friends and paid staff to work together to solve problems and get things done. By everybody working together things get sorted out and people feel good about seeing how things can change.

Person centred planning is for everybody not just people who know what they want or are able to tell others using words. Some of the most important changes we have seen have happened for people who have been overlooked in the past because they need a lot of help or have not had people around who knew them well.

How is Person Centred Planning Different?

Person centred planning puts the person at the centre of planning for their own lives by listening and learning about how they want to live now and in the future. Good planning should show what is possible with the right support and advice, NOT just what is on offer.

It discovers and acts on what is important to the person from their own point of view and/or those who love and care about them.

Most importantly, person centred planning makes sure that the plan is only the start and that things really change for the better. These changes might be small but lead to a much better quality of life or might include some of the bigger choices we make such as where we live.

Person centred planning helps you to work out what you want from life. People you know and trust help you work towards your goals. The idea is to get a life not a plan.

Circles of Support

From an early age, we start to build up our network of friends and colleagues - people we can turn to in times of trouble, or to share a celebration, people who share similar interests, who will be there to help us in practical ways, or to reassure us we are doing O.K.

The relationships that we form are important and yet we easily take for granted that our friends and family will be there when we need them. There are very few things we can achieve in life just on our own. A circle of support is a group of people who are invited to come together, and meet regularly to offer support and advice to a person. It is a way of sharing ideas and plans for the future.

The circle should include people who know and care about the person. It can also include people who have expertise in areas that might be useful (for example, education, housing or employment) and people who work for organisations that provide support for people with learning difficulties.

It is very helpful to have one person who will take responsibility for facilitating the meetings, keeping everyone focused on the task. Circle members will spend time listening to the person and their family, getting to know the person well - their likes and dislikes, interests and talents, hopes and ambitions.

They will then help the person to discuss and explore the things they want to achieve, by gathering information, making telephone enquiries, writing letters etc. A group of committed people working together to solve a problem, or explore a dream is a very powerful thing.