Understand person centred approaches in adult social care settings

Learning Partnership measures the degree to which teachers, parents, and students work together for the common good of the student. (Gruenert & Valentines, 1998)

Valuing People (Department of Health 2001) it was introduced by the labour government who were keen to promote independent living. This white paper on learning disabilities was for the first in England in 30 years. It made direct payments available to more people with a learning disability and was the first paper where we officially come across the term ‘Person Centred Planning’. It stresses the importance of Personal Centred Planning in helping people with learning difficulties take charge of their own lives. This paper has been ‘refreshed’ in 2009 titling it Value People Now and is a new three year strategy for people with learning disabilities, and will lead to better lives for people.

Partnership is when two or more organisations work together, showing cooperation and collaboration. This can provide better care and support for service users. For example, different funds working together, instead of working individually and stressing. Another example, a social worker and the health visitor will need to work together, share ideas and use different skills to develop a support plan that will benefit children and families. This also promotes multi-disciplinary working. Partnership thus can reduce conflicts and enhance team working skills as professionals can work together, sharing responsibilities and ensuring need led approaches are met and set. This can be done by reviewing care plans and offering support.

5. The plan results in ongoing listening, learning and further action - Person-centred planning should not be a one of event. It has taught us that everyone has a future regardless of any disabilities. It is about listening and learning and finding solutions to help people and ensure they have the kind of life they would like to live not being labelled and put into boxes and forgot about.

A partnership is an arrangement between two or more groups, organizations or individuals to work together

The Business and Partnership Unit is client liaison team for of all existing and new partnerships with an ambition to deliver efficiencies and improve services. To evidence transparency of the Councils partnerships by implementing an approved monitoring regime. To provide

The Joint Service for Disabled Children is a partnership developed by Enfield’s Children’s trust. It comprises specialist, inclusive, voluntary, health and education services to support and promote opportunities for all disabled children and their families in Enfield. The service is open to any disabled children and young people who have significant global delay, autism or life threatening conditions under the age of 18.

Ways of supporting an individual to lead the assessment and the planning process would be the participation of people with high support and care needs themselves, (people with severe/profound intellectual disability and/or complex disability) in the process of focusing on what is important to them now, and in the future. And acting upon this in alliance with their family and friends.

A large body of experience and research provides clear evidence about many of the key determinants of successful partnerships. The focus is to achieve better outcomes through improved service delivery. Partnership working has come a long way in recent years. There is now a consensus that effective partnership working is essential in order to design, develop and deliver personal services for those requiring support and assistance to optimise their independence and happiness. The most important features of an effective partnership are engaging the right people and ensuring they function as a genuine team.

The features of effective partnership working are to ensure there is good communication between all parties that ensure a high standard of care is delivered to the individual involved at all times. It ensures each party is covering all area’s and that all needs are met and that all partys have a good knowledge of who is delivering what to the individual and the contacts they have if other issues may arise and the access they have to these.

The special educational needs (SEN) team are supported by a very active group who make sure that they provide a range of activities to meet the needs of our ever growing community of special schools, as well as colleagues in mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Adults working with SEN children spend the majority of their time supporting that child however sometimes it’s the practitioners that needs the support. The role of the practitioners can be hard work and isn’t taken lightly, the practitioner needs support from other people around them to help promote their confidence and provide the correct provision for the children. A helpful support to practitioners could be the charity Mencap. Mencap work in partnership with people with a learning disability and all our services support people to live life as they choose.

Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability in the 21st Century’. Published 2001 The Protection of Vulnerable Adults Scheme (POVA) for England and Wales. Published 2004.

‘Anna Walker and David Behan, Inspectors of the Health and Social Care Commission recently launched an audit of all services for England for people with Learning Disabilities.’

The professional development design, partnerships is easy to implement at my school and has proven to be a great tool that teachers use to improve their own understanding and increase student learning in the classroom. When teachers partner with local businesses or scientists with the purpose of increasing student learning the results can be amazing. For instance, every year our school partners with the program Junior Achievement and a local bank to teach hands-on activities on entrepreneurship and work readiness to students. Through experiences like this, teachers can observe how the content is taught in different ways while students have the opportunity to learn directly from community bankers and leaders. Important information can be learned from this professional development design. Students can better relate to learning standards because they are given a real-world experience directly from business owners and teachers can be provided with a deeper insight of how to present the content to students.