The Origins of Person-Centered Planning: A Community of Practice Perspective

This paper traces the history of person-centered planning in programming for individuals with disabilities. It begins by describing the context shared by the first four methods of person-centered planning to emerge (Personal Futures Planning, Individual Design Sessions, Getting To Know You, and Twenty-Four Hour Planning) and some of their formative influences. The development of the Program Analysis of Service Systems (PASS) and the growth of community service systems sufficiently powerful to support all people, regardless of the severity of disability, is discussed, along with political and parent advocacy influences. It highlights the common agenda of the first approaches to person-centered planning which reflected their originator's involvement in the normalization teaching of community of practice. These approaches included: increasing choice, advocating de-personalizing labels and difference-making procedures, honoring the voices of the person and those who know the person best, building relationships, individualizing supports based on high expectations, and demanding that agencies adopt new forms of services. The paper concludes that person-centered planning has grown because passionate concern to support people with developmental disabilities to discover and contribute their gifts brought people together to form communities of practice. These communities of practice supported the creation of skills and knowledge necessary to organize growing numbers of people and agencies around people's vision of a good life in community. (Contains 57 references.) (CR)