Person-Centered Planning—The Path to Your Child’s Happiness
Person-centered planning brings together a community of support that can help your child set and accomplish specific goals. You can involve anyone you want in person-centered planning. You can do it at any time in your child’s life and make changes along the way. If started before a major transition, such as that from high school to a vocation, job, or post-secondary education, person-centered planning can help make for a smoother transition.
Setting the planning process into motion begins with exploring your child’s world, as he or she lives and breathes it—laying test results aside and noticing pure ability, effort, and desire. Person-centered planning helps lay the tracks of your child’s path to the future. It is part of the answer to “Who will care for my child when I’m gone?” because along this path your child will learn to become his or her own best advocate, determined to accomplish dreams and goals.
When Person-Centered Planning Occurs
You will engage in person-centered planning throughout your child’s life. It can become the cornerstone of every effort you make to either advocate for your child or encourage him or her to become a self-advocate. You can use it during day-to-day interactions with professionals of all walks of your child’s life: health care, education, government agencies, life transitions, career, independent living.
A Strategy for Person-Centered Planning
So what do you actually do to make a person-centered plan? Step into your child’s world. Ask what he or she is thinking about when elated, happy, sad, or completely agitated. Ask what your child longs to be or do and how he or she envisions making that happen. Take that information and begin forming a plan that will help your child forge a path toward personal fulfillment, self-advocacy, and independence.
Involving others in the person-centered plan builds a wider net of support. They can be family members; friends; neighbors; and school, social services, and health professionals.
To help your child develop a person-centered plan, you’ll first develop your child’s profile based on you and your child's input and that of other individuals you involve in the planning process. Then, you’ll conduct a planning meeting. You may wish to do that at your home or at a place where someone might help facilitate the meeting. Examples include your child’s school, your Parent Center, or social services agencies.
Here are some specific things you can do to create your child’s person-centered plan (see “Person Centered Planning.” PACER Center. Retrieved from http://www.pacer.org/tatra/ resources/personal.asp on August 30, 2010).
Develop Your Child’s Profile
Think of who might like to be involved in your child’s person centered plan. Invite them to a convenient place, such as your home, house of worship, or Parent Center. These people will be considered your child’s person-centered planning team.
Ask someone to record the conversation.
Ask everyone to share experiences with your child’s development, critical life events, and medical issues.
Ask everyone to describe how they perceive the quality of your child’s life. Ask them to consider your child’s community connections; dreams and goals; choices made; and expressions of confidence, strength, and weakness.
Ask everyone to describe the things your child loves to do, and the things that bring frustration or angst.
Create a profile of your child from the conversation notes.
Conduct a Planning Meeting
Pass out your child’s profile and give everybody a chance to review it.
Talk about what future events might affect your child’s development.
Share what future opportunities and obstacles your child might face in these future events.
Identify strategies for dealing with these events that will help your child reach dreams and goals.
Describe action steps that can help make dreams and goals become realties.
Person-Centered Planning: Desired Results
By taking the actions described in your child’s person-centered plan, you and the members of your child’s person-centered planning team can help your child embark on a journey toward long-term happiness. You may feel a sense of relief and peace of mind as the plan unfolds. Here are some end results you may see occur for your child:
Greater control over his or her life.
Increased opportunities to participate in the community.
A deeper awareness and appreciation for desires, interests, and dreams.
A willingness to set goals, and with the help from you and anyone else you involve in your child’s person-centered planning, turn dreams into reality.
Learn More about Person-Centered Planning
Cornell University's Employment and Disabilities has developed a Person Centered Planning Education Site, a rich online resource for individuals interested in learning more bout the basic concepts of person-centered planning and a variety of tools used in person-centered planning.
The expression, “It takes a village to raise a child,” is never more true than when talking about a child with a disability. Young people with disabilities need a support system that recognizes their individual strengths, interests, fears, and dreams and allows them to take charge of their future. Parents, teachers, family members, and friends in the community who offer informal guidance, support, and love can create the “village” for every child.
Source: “Person Centered Planning: A Tool for Transition” ParentBrief. PACER Center. February 2004.
The expression, “It takes a village to raise a child,” is never more true than when talking about a child with a disability. Young people with disabilities need a support system that recognizes their individual strengths, interests, fears, and dreams and allows them to take charge of their future. Parents, teachers, family members, and friends in the community who offer informal guidance, support, and love can create the “village” for every child.