Involving your child in their care and reviews
Involving your child as much as possible ensures that they have some say in their care and support, wherever possible. This is known as ‘person-centred planning’.
Person-centred planning (PCP) is a way of helping someone to plan their own life and support, focusing on what is important to them.
Further reading for education settings around person centred approaches ia available on the Inclusion toolkit (section 1.9)
Person-centred planning aims to:
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put more emphasis on what your child wants and what is important to them
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put both the parent and child at the centre of the support planning process
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take a ‘tell us once’ approach to families sharing information
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have professionals listen and respond to the importance of your child’s views, hopes and aspirations
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focus on the goals that families and their children have set for the future
When to use person-centred planning approaches
Education, health and social care professionals must work together to discuss and agree an approach so that they can work with you and your child giving you better control over how your child can achieve their goals.
Here is a video that explains more about what person-centred planning is.
Person-centred planning approaches could be used during the following meetings so that your child is involved in the planning of their future:
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SEN support meetings where your child has a review of interventions at school
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education health and care needs assessment (EHCna) where the outcomes for your child are discussed to go into the plan
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an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) annual review where once a year the progress of your child and their needs are reviewed against the EHCP
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social care assessments, where a social worker will assess your child and review and monitor how they are doing is the support package in place working
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team around the child known as TAC meetings, or team around the family meetings known as TAF meetings, where multi agencies working with you and your family will work on targeted support
One-page profiles
A one-page profile is used in person-centred planning, it is a summary of what’s important to and for your child and can show how they want to be supported.
A one-page profile captures all the important information about a person on a single sheet of paper. It could have simple headings such as.
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what people like about me
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what I think is important
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how best to help me
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my goals and wishes for the future
One-page profiles should only contain positive information. Your child should be involved in the development of their profile so that they can help those around them to know how best to support them. Usually, the school or a professional who is working with your child would produce this with your child. However, this may be useful to use or develop yourself with your child if for example, they have clubs that they belong to.
The council’s young people participation team along with children from Culverhill school have produced one-page profile templates. Pupils can use them that have an Education, Health and Care plan (EHCP) or are getting SEN support. Speak to your school to find out if your child has a profile or if one can be set up.
The Helen Sanderson Associates website has information that will help explain in more detail how one-page profiles work and are used across education, health and social care.
Person-centred thinking tools to help write a one-page profile
To complete a one-page profile or collect the views of your child yourself, the education setting or professional who works with your child may find it useful to use other person-centred thinking tools.
Helen Sanderson Associates have developed person-centred thinking tools and templates that can be used to give structure to conversations. Using them is a practical way to capture information that feeds into care and support planning, as well as to improve understanding, communication and relationships.
The following links are articles from the Helen Sanderson Associates website.
These help you think about the people involved in your child’s life.
This tool helps you to have conversations about what a good day is like, from when your child wakes up to when they go to bed.
Important to and important for
You need to learn both what is important to your child and what is important for them
What’s working and not working tool
When thinking about what the child or young person would like to do in the future, it is helpful to consider what is working and you would like to keep, and the things that aren’t working and may need to change.
This is in two parts, a decision-making profile and a decision-making agreement. Used together they can help you work with a child or young person to support them in making decisions and record how decisions will be made.
For further examples visit Helen Sanderson person-centred thinking tools