Experiences from the project New Paths to Inclusion

Person Centred Planning is a tool to help people with intellectual disabilities achieve their dreams with the help of family and friends. There was a project called New Paths to Inclusion. This project was to make more people in Europe use Person Centred Planning. The project finished. You can read about the results of this project in the final publication.

The final Publication of the project “New Paths to Inclusion” compiles experiences and results delivered by the project which significantly helped to advance person-centred planning training and practice across Europe.  Person centred planning (PCP) refers to a family of planning and practice approaches to organizing and guiding positive personal, organisational and community change in alliance with people with disabilities, their families and friends. After evaluating the success and practice of PCP in the United Kingdom, the project “New Paths to Inclusion”surged to implement the same methods through the rest of Europe, adapted and conceptualized into new vocational education qualification formats for the rest of Europe. The objective of this project was to advance inclusion in all aspects of society for people with intellectual disabilities.

In order to achieve this goal, “New Paths to Inclusion” was to transfer the newest developments and experiences of PCP from the United Kingdom to partners in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Luxembourg. 

Training in Person Centred Planning

Prior to the project, the PCP training in the participating countries consisted of one or two day seminar with no comprehensive training possibilities. The "New Paths" curriculum was based on the UK’s experience. However, it also included experiences from other European countries.

The new curriculum was mostly developed by Helen Anderson associates, an experienced training and consultancy organisation in person centred thinking, planning and practice. Other contributors were the national coordinators from Austria, Czech Republic and Germany and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

The curriculum is divided in 6 modules:

These modules were implemented by the participating organisations in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Moreover, representatives from Luxembourg, Italy and Slovakia, who participated in the project as observers, reviewed the project results in order to export the ideas to their own countries and organisations.

Evaluation of the programme

The Final Publication denotes that the project had very positive feedback from participants. Moreover it inspired a huge number of activities and next steps in Austria, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany and Slovakia. Participants agreed that the project brought together coherently all known aspects of PCP. Moreover, it combined all different levels of planning (persons, organisations and social spaces) in a supplementing way.

The New Paths Curriculum development Group was also pleased with many aspects such as the atmosphere of the courses or the new quality of cooperation between partners. They were specially satisfied with the changes that participants have been able to instigate in people's life.

However there are still some challenges to overcome such as the extension of person-centred training and practice to the rest of Europe. While the overview was positive in general some changes were recommended specially regarding facilitating the participation of self-advocates.

To learn more about the project, please visit its website or read the Final Publication "Training and Practice in Person Centred Planning - The European Perspective".

In the United Kingdom, since 2001, person centred planning is central to the Government’s strategy for the development and delivery of health and social care services for people with intellectual disabilities. People centred planning was based on the principles of rights to independence, choice and inclusion. It was seen as a means by which people, their families, professionals and service managers could discover what is important to people with intellectual disabilities to achieve the principles mentioned above.

The implementation of people centred planning was a success. A study on the impact of PCP on people with intellectual disabilities done in 2007 demonstrated among others that PCP is associated with a 52% increase in size of social networks and a 30% increase in number of community based activities. However it was soon discovered that PCP worked better if the staff used people centred thinking tools in their roles giving people more choice and control on a day to day basis.