Shevin Consulting
	(315) 443-5179 info@shevin.org	Mayer Shevin, Ph.D. 275 Fellows Ave. Syracuse NY 13210 USA

SUPPORT TO AGENCIES AND ORGANIZATIONS MOVING TOWARD A PERSON-CENTERED PLANNING APPROACH  

 Mayer Shevin, Ph.D.

Many agencies and organizations which provide services to, or advocate for, individuals with disabilities, are seeking effective and respectful ways to place the persons for whom planning is being done at the center of the decision-making process.  They also seek to involve these individuals with networks of people who will support them in pursuing their personal goals.  However, this movement often takes place in an atmosphere of attitudes, structures and regulations which do not promote such person-centered activities.

Training and consultation related to person-centered planning are offered in the following ways:

WORKSHOPS

Half-day and one-day workshops are offered in person-centered planning.  Although these workshops are customized to meet the needs of individual agencies, both half-day and one-day workshops typically include the following topics:

• The philosophy and history of person-centered planning
• understanding the history of the prevalent "fix-it" approach of human service agencies
• the development of alternative approaches to the diagnostically-based service plan (i.e. approaches developed by John O'Brien and Connie Lyle-O'Brien, Beth Mount, Marsha Forest and Jack Pierpoint, Michael Smull, etc.)
• Comparing underlying assumptions of traditional and person-centered approaches to planning
• "Nuts-and-bolts" issues in person-centered planning -- brief introduction to
• Who is involved?
• "Planning for planning"
• Typical content of initial and subsequent meetings
• How meetings are facilitated in ways that empower and connect participants
• Coordination between facilitators and other team participants
  
• Follow-up
• The relationship between person-centered planning and other forms of planning already used by agencies.

See the Powerpoint slides from a presentation I did on this topic in Portland, OR, March, 2002 (Internet Explorer).
See the Powerpoint slides from a presentation I did on this topic in Portland, OR, March, 2002 (Netscape).

In addition to these topics, one-day workshops include opportunities to problem-solve concerning strengths, barriers, and next steps involved in implementing person-centered planning within particular agencies.

CONSULTATIVE SUPPORT

PILOT PROJECTS: 

Ongoing support for agencies seeking to explore the use of person-centered planning with a selected few clients, as a way for the agency to learn its capacity for extending such services more widely.  This can include

• facilitation of initial planning meetings for specific individuals
• ongoing support to facilitators
• follow-up evaluative processing with pilot project participants