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Innovation for inclusion: Person Centred Planning

Person Centred Planning is a tool that helps people with intellectual disabilities to plan their life and realise their dreams with help of their family and friends. Inclusion Europe took part in a project to make Person Centred Planning known in all Europe. People who work on the project came to the Europe in Action conference to talk about Person Centred Planning.

“Person centred planning is a process of continual listening to and learning about what is important to the person in partnership with family and friends.” (Sanderson) Person Centred Planning applies creative tools and approaches to create a structured individual life plan WITH the person, taking into account who they are, what is important to the them, and what the they want to do with life.

The plans are elaborated during planning meetings attended by person’s family, friends and supporters coordinated by an experienced facilitator. Person Centred Planning offers a whole a range of tools for different intentions in one's life. In the workshop by Ines Boban and Andreas Hinz from Martin-Luther-University and Julie Lunt from the Helen Sanderson Associates, participants could try out different PCP tools such as MAP or PATH and find out ways for individuals, families and organisations to make a real difference in their daily lives; thus facilitating a deeper understanding of the project New Paths to Inclusion. Both tools use graphic visualisation to identify who the person is, what their dreams are and how to achieve them.

Personal experiences on Person Centered Planning

Julie Lunt described the experience of person centred practice from the United Kingdom where she works with local authorities in order to develop support planning as part of the government's personalisation programme, offering people with disabilities personal budgets to plan their care. PCP has been officially adopted by the British government in 2001 when the first white paper on learning disability was published and it has been strengthened ever since as a key method of delivering on government’s personalisation agenda.

The self-advocates' perspective of Person Centred Planning was presented by Aglaia Parth, a self-advocate from Austria and her support person Lisa Wimmler. Agalia works as a counsellor at WIBS  - a counselling centre from and for people with learning difficulties. "I am a self-advocate because everybody should be able to lead one’s life as he/she pleases" she says. In her workshop, Aglaia talked about her experience with Person Centred Planning, explaining how this method can help people with intellectual disabilities to lead a self-determined life.

New Paths for Inclusion

The project "New Paths to Inclusion" was launched in October 2009 with support of the Life-Long Learning Programme of the European Commission. The project aimed to collect and transfer the latest developments of Person Centred Planning and Practice from the United Kingdom and develop training formats for professionals, self-advocates and families in the rest of Europe. An elaborated curriculum, as one of the key project outputs, has been tested and evaluated via pilot training courses in Austria, Germany and Czech Republic.

A final event for the project "New Paths to Inclusion" was held in Larnaca on 13 May 2011 within the annual conference of Inclusion Europe "Europe in Action 2011". It was a unique opportunity for participants from all over Europe to get familiar with this powerful method empowering people with intellectual disabilities to lead a self-determined life.

The evaluation of the project results were presented in Larnaca by professor Andreas Hinz from Martin-Luther-University Halle (Germany)·who had been involved in the project as an external evaluator. He also revealed the outcomes of the European survey on Person Centred Planning, equally conducted within the framework of the project, based on a questionnaire sent out to members of Inclusion Europe. The results of this survey will be published in the European publication "Training and Practice in Person Centred Planning - a European perspective".

For more information about the project, please, go to www.personcentredplanning.eu or join the Network of Professionals for Person Centred Planning on Facebook.