Person Centred Planning

The Aims of Person Centred Planning

Person Centred Planning aims to give everyone with learning disabilities their own individual plan – putting them "at the centre" of charting their future and how they can make things happen.

We want Person Centred Planning to be a help in this process. It will help those around the person discover what they want out of a particular situation and hopefully give them some sense of control over events that might otherwise be experienced as happening to them rather than with them.

The Development of Person Centred Planning

In order to "create" these plans we embarked on a programme of training initially. Valuing People talks about a "breadth" and "depth" approach to Person Centred Planning. Firstly we introduced the idea and awareness about Person Centred Planning. These were training sessions for staff and families to attend and try it out on themselves! That was the "breadth" approach.

We also needed to train some people in "depth" to make the plans happen. There are now a group of trained facilitators who are enabling these plans to be created. The next stage in an individual's plan is creating the circle of support around the individual so that the person with a learning disability can achieve their plan! The circle can be anyone from a family member to someone in the community who has a particular interest in helping something particular from the plan become reality.

The Activity of Person Centred Planning

Currently we are concentrating on two "groups" of people who would benefit most from Person Centred Plans.

A current key priority is planning for young people with learning disabilities who are moving from school to adult life. The other priority are those people living at home with their families and where the family are concerned about who will look after their son or daughter when they can no longer do so.

Moving from school to adult life is a transition- leaving home to live separately is a transition. Both situations can be times of potential stress and difficulty.


The experience of a better transitional experience both for young people to adult life and for those living at home with carers who may become unable to care in the future is very important. We know that for families faced with their children growing up and leaving education it can feel like " hurtling into a void". The services simply do not connect in the same way that everything did when the young person was at school and everything was in one place.

Further Information

For further information, please contact the Learning Disability Team by telephone on 01628 796718 or email them at learning.disability@RBWM.gov.uk. You can also find more information by clicking the following link to view the Learning Disability Partnership Board page.