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What is person-centered planning, you may ask? John O'Brien and Herbert Lovett discuss this issue in their article titled "Finding a way toward everyday lifes: the contributions of person centered planning".
The term "person centered planning" refers to a family of approaches to organizing and guiding community change in alliance with people with disabilities and their families and friends.
These approaches include:
Each of these approaches to person centered planning has distinctive practices, but all share a common foundation of beliefs.
The person at the focus of the planning, and those who love the person, are the primary authorities on the person's life direction.
The purpose of person centered planning is learning through shared action. People engaging in this process may produce documentation of meetings, proposals, specifications, or budgets. These are only footprints: the path is made by people walking together.
Person centered planning aims to change common patterns of community life. Negative patterns such as segregation and congregation of people with disabilities, devaluing stereotypes, inappropriately low expectations, and denial of opportunity do not necessarily signify mean-spiritedness so much as undesireable habit. Person centered planning stimulates community hospitality by inviting people to assist others with disabilities to pursue a desireable future. Some may remain closed and rejecting, but many will respond generously based on their sense of justice.
Person centered planning requires collaborative action and fundamentally challenges practices that separate people and perpetuate controlling relationships. In order to support the kinds of community changes necessary to improve peoples' chances for a desireable future, virtually all existing human service policies and agencies will have to change the way they regard people, the ways they relate to communities, the ways they spend money, the ways they define staff roles and responsibilities, and the ways they exercise authority.
Honest person centered planning can only come from respect for the dignity and completeness of the focus person. This respect means we should work for equal, non-coercive relationships, appreciate and celebrate each person's uniqueness, communicate the importance of equality and respect, and we should look for constructive ways to understand one another's challenges and failings.
Person centered planning engages powerful emotional and ethical issues and calls for a sustained search for effective ways to deal with difficult barriers and conflicting demands. Assisting people to define and pursue a desireable future tests one's clarity, commitment, and courage. Treating person centered planning simply as a technique will offer little benefit.
As you can see, person centered planning is a complex and interesting way of working toward a better future. It does have its limitations, as does every type of service delivery. If you would like a complete copy of this article, you can find it at this link: http://soeweb.syr.edu/thechp/rsapub.htm . There are several articles listed on this page, in alphabetical order. The one I referenced here is called Finding a way to everyday lives: The contribution of person centered planning.
You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to be able to read it. There's a link to download the reader if you don't have it already.
Allen, Shea, & Associates
Check out what Michael Smull has to say!
The Center on Human Policy
Label jars...not people.
Training Resource Network
Offering resources on the full inclusion of persons with disabilities
in their communities.