Person Centred Planning

 

What is Person Centre Planning (PCP)?

It’s about lives not just about plans! Person centred planning is finding ways of listening to people to find out what is most important to them and what they want from their lives. The next step is to help people get those things. Valuing People said that services should use person centred approaches to planning for everyone who needs services.

Person Centred Planning with families

Talbot House has been involved with the implementation of person centred planning in Manchester since the Learning Disability Partnership Board was established in 2002 to address the Valuing People (Department of Health 2001) agenda. In the early days families were introduced to person centred planning and consulted with on how best families could become involved. Parents and carers who were members of Talbot House decided that group workshops would be the way forward as they wanted to work alongside friends and share the experience. PCP coordinators from the Manchester Learning Disability Partnership worked with the staff at Talbot House and developed a ‘guide book’ type format for a person centred plan and began running weekly workshops for groups of 10 parent/carers. Workshops ran for approximately 12 weeks or until everyone had a full life support plan for their sons and daughters with severe learning disabilities – they saw this plan as the essential guide to supporting their sons and daughters and one they would share with everyone playing a supporting/caring role. PCP coordinators guided the parent/carers page by page and advised and prompted on the amount and type of information to be collected and recorded. Demand for the workshops has been constant as plans have been shared and developed. For more information or to join a workshop contact Talbot House direct.

Person Centred Thinking Skills Training In April 2010 a new Person Centred Thinking Skills Training course was launched – this is a one day training course for providers of services in Manchester to raise awareness and encourage use of person centred thinking tools, facilitated by staff of the Manchester Learning Disability Partnership and co- facilitated by one of the Talbot House parents. The course was developed by the PCP Audit Group of the Partnership Board of which Talbot House is a member.

Person Centred Reviews Talbot House promotes person centred reviews by sending parents on facilitation training and attending reviews to support people and families, as well as offering the premises as a review venue so families can feel more relaxed and in control.

Person Centred Planning and Transition In 2009 Manchester became a demonstration site for the `Getting a Life` project and Talbot House were invited to join the project team as family representatives. Families of young people who were already attending planning workshops consented for their teenage children to become part of a cohort of 30 young people to be tracked over a three year period to see how through person centred approaches to support and education a young person might have better `career prospects`. The project is focusing on employment and raising aspirations from an early age as well as working with services to develop a smoother transition process. For more information about this project visit www.gettingalife.org and check out the Manchester page.