Personal Futures Planning

"The person futures planning process suggests a series of tasks and provides a set of tools to help us begin the process with people to uncover their capacities, to discover opportunities in the local community, and to invent new service responses that help more than get in the way" Beth Mount.

Papers and Articles

Personal Futures Planning was developed by Beth Mount and John O'Brien. This description is based on Beth's book 'Person centred planning - finding directions for change using person centred planning' (1992). More recently, Beth has developed a work book called 'Capacity Works' that describes six 'windows for change' using Personal Futures Planning.

Personal Futures Planning is a planning process that involves:

Getting to know the person and what her life is like now.
Developing ideas about what she would like in the future.
Taking action to move towards this, which involves exploring possibilities within the community and looking at what needs to change within services.

The process is colourfully recorded in words and pictures using different 'maps' as graphic illustrations of different areas of the person's life. Each part of the planning process is guided by what is important to the person and by the five accomplishments.

Getting to know the person and developing a personal profile.
The personal profile provides a shared understanding to which everyone who is important to the person can contribute. It involves finding out about what Beth Mount describes as the 'rich folklore of people', and trying to get beyond negative reputations.

There are different ways of doing this, for example:

The facilitator uses the 'getting to know you' process described earlier and then summarises what has been learned on the maps people, plans and possibilities.
The person invites people to a personal profile meeting where the information will be gathered directly on to the maps.
The person spends time recording her own life in a booklet similar to 'My Life, My meeting' and puts this information onto maps before the planning meeting.

Facilitators look for the way which will help the person to contribute to the process. Five basic maps are used, plus optional maps to record additional information where it is needed.

Basic Maps

Relationship Map:

Identifies who is important to the person.
This Map is useful...

to find out who could contribute to the profile or planning process
to identify relationships that could be developed or strengthened
to show the balance of family, friends and paid workers in the person's life.

Places Map:

Shows where the person goes.
This Map is useful...

to show how the person spends her time
to identify time spent in segregated and community places
to illustrate opportunities for increasing the time spent in the community.

Background Map:

Gives an overview of what life has been like for the person.
This Map is useful...

to keep in touch with the person's history
to identify experiences which must not be repeated
to celebrate achievements
to identify opportunities and positive experiences that can be built on.

Preferences Map:

Describes what the person likes and dislikes.
This Map is useful...

• to show what the person enjoys, is good at and can contribute to

• to identify things that the person may want to do more often

• to show what situations and experiences should be avoided.

Dreams, Hopes & Fears Map:

This Map is useful...

to get a sense of the lifestyle that the person would like through her eyes
to identify what the person is most afraid of happening
to set the agenda for the planning meeting.

Optional Maps

Choices Map:

Shows what decisions the person makes and which are made by others.
This Map is useful...

establishes what autonomy the person has
indicates areas which can be worked on to give the person more control of her life.

Health Map:

Describes what helps and what damages the persons health.
This Map is useful...

specifies aspects of the person's health that need attention
shows what is happening to make the person healthier that needs to be continued or developed.

Choices Map:

Shows what decisions the person makes and which are made by others.
This Map is useful...

to acknowledge positive aspects of the person's life that enhance respect
to identify things that other people may struggle with which could affect how the person is seen and understood.

The personal futures planning meeting.

At the planning meeting the facilitator takes the group through five steps:

Reviewing the personal profile.
Describing a positive future for the person - using the information from the profile, the group describes the future they would like for the focus person.
Brainstorming ways of making this happen.
Agreeing short-term and long-term priorities and who will do what by when the group identifies the opportunities to build on and the obstacles to overcome, particularly where www.helensandersonassociates.co.uk major changes are needed in the way the service is provided.
Setting the next meeting time and date.

Further meetings

The group continues to meet to review progress, deal with setbacks and an new ways to overcome obstacles.

"Personal Futures Planning moves the locus of change away from the person with a disability toward a focus on changing social roles, responses, and existing organisational structures. As an on-going process of innovation, it can help liberate people from oppressive environments and processes that hurt them."
Beth Mount

Joyce's personal futures plan

Two years ago Joyce moved from the hostel where she was living to a semi-detached house in the city with Ruth. In the last two years she has had three different key workers supported by three different managers. As a result, little was remembered about Joyce's views, what is important to her, or what life had been like in the past. She did not complain, she just thought that was how services worked.

Joyce's latest keyworker, June, and the planning facilitator, Karen, met to talk about the planning process. Joyce wanted to collect the information about her life herself with some help from her brother and Karen. Over the next two months Joyce and Karen spent an afternoon each week around the kitchen working on a personal profile. When they had finished, Joyce shared it with her brother to see if there was anything that he wanted to add.

Then they discussed where and when Joyce wanted the meeting to take place and who would be invited.

Joyce decided that she wanted her physiotherapist to send a report before the meeting, but not actually come. Karen and Joyce talked about how she wanted the information from the profile shared with the others. Joyce did not want to talk about her past very much although she wanted the group to have some information about it. They decided to transfer the information from the profile onto posters.

As agreed, Joyce introduced everyone at the beginning of the meeting, and then Karen read through the posters and asked Joyce to add anything she wanted to at the end. Then Joyce gave people coffee and some cakes that she had baked.

Joyce was asked what she wanted to change. On her relationship map there were two people that Joyce did not see anymore and that the staff did not know about. The first was Lucy, who used to work at the hostel, and had met up with Joyce a couple of times in her new house. The second was Peter, whom Joyce had met at a self-advocacy group. They had had a few meals together and had been to the cinema, but had not seen each other for 18 months. Joyce wanted to meet up with them both again.

Joyce also wanted a telephone and answering machine in her bedroom, a doorbell that worked, a hanging basket in the back garden and a carriage clock similar to her mother's. Joyce wanted to try new activities and visit new places.

The group worked with Joyce to turn each of these into actions. Her brother agreed to help her buy the carriage clock and bought her an answering machine for her birthday. June and Joyce planned how to contact Lucy and Peter again. Eve wanted to go along with Joyce to try new activities. Joyce was asked what she wanted to change. On her relationship map there were two people that Joyce did not see anymore and that the staff did not know about…. June and Joyce planned how to contact Lucy and Peter again.

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Examples and Stories

Joyce's Personal Futures Plan.

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