Person Centered Planning
Person centeredness entails:
- A commitment to know and seek to understand
- A conscious resolve to be of genuine service
- An openness to being guided by the person
- A willingness to struggle for difficult goals
- Flexibility, creativity, and openness to trying what might be possible
- A willingness to enhance the humanity and dignity of the person
- Looking for the good in people and helping to bring it out
--Michael Kendrick
When planning to support people with intellectual disabilities to attend college, a critical first step is the provision of Person Centered Planning. This helps to identify the dreams and goals that the person has, and what supports (natural and formal) they may need to reach their dreams. By starting with a person centered plan, and using that plan to guide and structure what the person does next, you can assure that services and supports are focusing on strengths and capacities, and that the postsecondary initiative is planning supports based on what the person wants, rather than on what is available or what seems reasonable. Here you can find several resources related to person centered planning.
Resources:
- How is Person Centered Planning Different from Traditional Planning (download Word document)
- Increasing Person-Centered Thinking: A Manual for Person-Centered Planning Facilitators(download PDF)
- Finding a Way to Everyday Lives (download PDF)
- Two excellent websites to learn more about Person Centered Planning:
- The Person Centered Planning Education Site: A Project of Cornell University
- PACER Center Knowledge Center on Person Centered Planning
