Inspire - Partnership Through Life

Person Centred Planning (PCP) is a fundamentally different way of seeing and working with people with disabilities. PCP aims to articulate the aspirations and dreams of the individual and make them a priority when planning and providing services and support. It requires a fundamental shift of thinking from a 'power over' relationship to a 'power with' relationship. Person Centred Planning plays a particularly important role in delivering the objectives in the 2000 ‘Same As You?’ Scottish Executive’s Report and has underpinned Inspire's provision of tailored, individualised support since 1995.

In 2004, Inspire implemented a large-scale initiative to increase the skills and knowledge of workers in the technique and improve the service planning, delivery and approach consistently across the organisation.

Inspire provided introductory training for all workers; advanced training; continuing support groups; training for internal facilitators and released time for workers to implement specific PCP activities. This has ensured workers can support our service users to create an Essential Lifestyle Plan which allows individuals to inform us of how Inspire can best support them.

Additional benefits have included internal policies and surveys becoming available with symbols and pictures to be more easily understood by the individuals we support. We have also seen the development of Personal Passports so individuals can easily communicate their likes, dislikes and any safety information to family, friends and carers. Finally, Inspire implemented a PCP technique for annual service planning which enables workers to experience the process and philosophy for their own workplaces, as well as understand how it can benefit others.