Active Support and Person‐Centred Planning: Strange Bedfellows or Ideal Partners?

Valuing People (DoH, 2001) proposes person‐centred planning (PCP) as a way for service users to exercise more power and control. Active support (AS) is also an approach designed to improve the quality of life of people with severe disabilities by enabling them to participate as fully as possible in daily activities. PCP and some of the components of AS are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. While PCP can generate ideas, AS can help implement them, and used together PCP and AS can provide a way to facilitate user participation and improve users' quality of life. This paper uses a case history to illustrate this potential, and describes how a particular form of PCP, essential lifestyle planning (ELP), was used in conjunction with some of the planning and programming components of AS.