Coyle, K. & Moloney, K.,

1999,

Reviewed by Janet Robertson,
Institute for Health Research,
Lancaster University

Methodology

This study involved the adult division of a voluntary agency in Ireland which serves around 200 people with learning disabilities. Person centre planning (PCP), using a variant of Personal Futures Planning, was adopted to co-ordinate service inputs around the expressed wishes and desires of service users. The authors were involved in training staff in the PCP process.

All staff in the organisation who had been involved in the PCP training were surveyed via a questionnaire. Twenty-seven replies were received from frontline staff, sixteen of which had details of a completed plan for a particular individual. The remaining 11 had not yet completed the full process. Information regarding plans was analysed with respect to: the type of goals set; who was given responsibility for outcomes; the numbers of people involved at each stage of the PCP process; and the timing and location of Circle of Support meetings. All 27 respondents completed items regarding the training they had received in PCP and suggestions for improvements in training.

Critical appraisal

The report is brief and as such omits much information which would be of help to the reader in interpreting the results. Most notably, no indication is given of the timescale involved in the study. If the survey was done shortly after the staff training, then it would not be surprising that 11 plans had not been completed. However, if considerable time had elapsed since the training, questions would need to be raised with regard to why some plans had not been completed. Similarly, information is given on the proportion of goals specified in plans that had been achieved but it is difficult to interpret these results in the absence of information on timescales.

There is also little information given with regard to the content of the survey questionnaire itself, and no information on the response rate obtained. Finally, there is no information given on the extent of the PCP training that staff received.

Key findings

• For the sixteen completed plans, a total of 99 goals were identified (mean 6; range 3 to 10). Of these: 16% concerned work; 10% day time training; 21% day time leisure; 8% evening time training; 14% evening time leisure; 10% holidays; 6% living arrangements; and 14% "other" goals. The authors note that the range of goals appears to be limited to options previously available to service users and that major categories which might be expected, such as personal relationships or sexuality, are entirely absent.
• Responsibility for achieving goals was mainly allocated to agency staff (56% of all goals specified), and the person him or herself (20%). Family members, neighbours, friends or others only took responsibility for a total of 23% of goals. With respect to actually achieving goals, at the time of data collection, 77% of goals had either been achieved or were in the process of being addressed.
• With respect to staff training, a third of respondents considered the training they had received to be inadequate. Many staff (59%) independently suggested that they would prefer a system where they learn about planning from others already experienced in the process on a one to one basis. Thirty-seven percent of respondents felt that families needed more information about the process.

Social work practice/ policy implications