How can we link people’s self-directed plans with community building?
Why would we link people’s self-directed plans with community building?
More and more service users are developing self-directed plans, either with or without an Individual Support Package (ISP). These plans contain rich information about people’s aspirations and needs. If we can start to recognise the themes emerging from people’s plans, we can ensure that the work of the Community Building Program is targeted to people’s aspirations and needs. Access Officers can use this information to work with relevant communities or organisations to support them to become more inclusive.
Across the state, people are exploring ways to share the information in support plans. Following are a number of examples of how communities have undertaken shared planning activities or used existing information to become more inclusive. These may give you ideas for what you could do as part of your role.
Talking with residents
In a metropolitan council area, the MetroAccess Officer supervised a social work student on placement to visit all of the disability services group homes in the area. The student interviewed the residents in each house about their aspirations and needs and recorded and collated the information. The MetroAccess Officer was then able to use this information to inform the priorities for her community building work.
Planning as a group
A metropolitan day service for people with complex support needs has an annual community day to plan as a group. Along with the service users, a group conversation is held with the people involved in their daily lives. This includes families, taxi and bus drivers, support workers, the MetroAccess Officer, Access for All Abilities worker and the local council volunteer co-ordinator. With the assistance of a professional facilitator, the group explores ideas, hopes and dreams. This provides the service and the other stakeholders a basis for planning supports for the group members.
Co-location
A non-metropolitan council trialled an arrangement where a Disability Services-funded facilitator position was employed by the council and co-located in the same team as the RuralAccess Officers. This allowed for a daily exchange of information about the needs and aspirations of people with a disability in the area. Importantly, it also fostered a sharing of skills and knowledge between the facilitator and the RuralAccess Officers, who had different skills and experience, thereby enabling people’s goals to be more closely linked to local community life.
Keeping track
The DHS-based planners in one non-metropolitan region have trialled a tally sheet system as part of the Enhanced Planning pilot project. They set up a table with columns reflecting disability-related support needs, as well as areas of community life, such as education, employment, sport/recreation and others. When a person’s plan was completed the planner would place a tally mark or a note in each column reflected in that plan. Over time, this gave aggregated information about what areas of community life were most important in local people’s planning. This could in turn give the Community Building Program useful information about where to target their work.
Planning together
A metropolitan region has established local area planning networks for each local government area, where the disability service providers, other relevant community service organisations, and advocates, carers and people with a disability meet regularly with the MetroAccess Officer to exchange information. Similar networks exist in other places across the state. These networks might be:
· Place-based, eg for a particular town;
· Cohort-based, eg young people; or
· Activity-based, eg neighbourhood houses and community centres.
A standing agenda item could become “What themes are emerging from people’s plans?”
Regional Individual Support Package System
The DHS office of a large metropolitan region has taken the data available in the Regional ISP System (RIS) and looked particularly at the categories of:
· Sport and recreation activities
· Health, fitness and medical services
They have then sorted these categories by local government area and looked at which organisations service users are purchasing supports from. Where there are a significant number of people attending a particular facility (for example a local pool or a gym), this provides an evidence base for the local MetroAccess Officer to do some targeted work with that facility, and may suggest that these organisations should be considered as partners for future Disability Services projects.
Reviewing planning
In a rural region, a group of disability service providers partnered with a RuralAccess Officer to explore how well people with a disability and their families understood the planning process. After interviewing service users and family members, the RuralAccess Officer was able to provide independent feedback to the service providers. Together they identified potential areas for staff development and links to community activities and supports to help meet the expectations of people and their families.
Working together for change
In the United Kingdom the Department of Health worked in partnership with local government and other partners to develop a way of connecting self-direction with community planning. The Working together for change document outlines a simple, six-stage process that uses person-centred information taken directly from individual support plans to inform strategic planning. People with a disability and carers are actively involved in the process which involves workshops to cluster information gathered from plans. The process is outlined fully in the publication which is available on the web: http://www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/_library/Resources/Personalisation/Personalisation_advice/WTFC_Final.pdf.
A note about privacy
All disability professionals are committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of personal information relating to service users. This means that we work within the principles and the privacy-related provisions of the Disability Act 2006 and the Heath Records Act 2001 or the Information Privacy Act 2001 that protect peoples’ personal information. Therefore we:
· Collect only the information which we need to provide a service to the person;
· Ensure that the person knows why we collect the information and how we will handle it;
· Use and disclose it only to provide a service to the person, or for another purpose with the person’s consent;
· Store it securely, protecting it from unauthorised access.
Working within these privacy principles does not stop us from using the information gathered in self-directed planning to inform community building. In order to protect people’s privacy we can:
· Seek informed consent from service users to share their needs and aspirations identified in their plans with other relevant professionals (eg Access Officers); or
· Share information with other relevant professionals in a de-identified manner (ie names and other identifying information removed).
There will also be other ways to continue to protect the privacy and confidentiality of service users while still working to support the community to be more inclusive of those people. It may be helpful to have a discussion with your supervisor or colleagues about how to best manage this. More information and guidance can be found at http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/privacy.
Find out more
This is one of a series of four tip sheets exploring the link between self-directed planning for people with a disability and community building. Find out more on the DHS website: http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/for-individuals/disability/self-directed-support