MY PLAN – GUIDANCE NOTES

A My Plan should be used where it is known what the needs are, what the impact is likely to be and who or what may be able to help.

If you have completed a My Profile it is important to ensure this is attached to the My Plan so that anyone working with a child/young personcan see what they like and dislike and how they like to be communicated with.

Examples of when a My Plan could be used:

  • For an individualchild/young personand their family who is accessing support from one agency. For example:
  • Achild/young person with Special Educational Needs or Disability in a school being supported by staff within the setting.
  • A young person not accessing education, training or learning.
  • A child/young person with a health need being supported by the school nurse or a health visitor.
  • A child/young person with a social need being supported by a Family Support Worker within a setting.
  • An unborn baby whose parent/s have a range of needs that will impact on their caring responsibilities.
  • As a multi-agency plan for an individual child/young person and their family. For example:
  • Achild/young person in a nursery setting with health and social needs receiving support from a Health Visitor, Speech and Language Therapistand staff within the nursery setting.
  • A child/young person with Special Educational Needs or Disability who is being supported by staff in school, an Educational Psychologist and an Occupational Therapist.
  • A child/young person with an emotional need supported by a Family Support Worker in the setting and a counselling service.
  • As a multiagency plan for a whole family where thechild/young person attend different settings. For example:
  • A family where the Health Visitor is supporting Mum and baby in the home with feeding, the primary school agechild/young person is receiving support in school from the SENCo due to low level educational needs and the teenager is receiving support from a mentor because they have some social difficulties.
  • When using My Plan with a family, you do not need a separate My Plan for each family member.The needs, outcomes and actions can all be addressed on one form as long as you make it clear which person the outcomes relate to.
  • My Plan should be written with the child/young person and/or their family to ensure their voice is central to the plan. This will allow the child/young person/family to take ownership of the plan and secure their engagement and commitment to working towards meeting their identified needs and outcomes.

It is important to remember that where needs are more complex and further information is required to understand who or what will help, you would need to think about using the My Assessment and My Plan +. This is to ensure you have assessed the needs and impact more fully in order to access the correct support.

Reason for My Plan

  • You need to think about what has brought the child/young person or their family to the point of needing a My Plan and write a brief description of their current situation. You need to ensure that you think about the positives for the child/young person and their family as well as highlighting your concerns. Some of things you may consider are:
  • What is going well
  • Who supports them
  • What are they good at and enjoy doing
  • What are their aspirations
  • Anyphysical health needsincluding any medication taken routinely
  • Any diagnosis the child/young person may have received
  • Any mental health issues
  • How the child/young person communicate
  • Key relationships within the home and the impact of these
  • Attendance at settings
  • Behavior at home and in the setting
  • Routines at home including the amount of sleep family members are getting
  • Any caring responsibilities the child/young person may have
  • This is not an exhaustive list and there may be other issues to consider.

What has already been tried in order to support the child/young person

  • In order to think about what may help in the future it is important to think about what has been tried in the past.
  • You need to think about what has worked well as this will highlight the types of approaches that the child/young person and/or their family respond to so that you can build on these.
  • You need to think about the things that have not gone well or have not worked so that you do not duplicate interventions and strategies that are not helpful for the child/young person and/or their family.

Has a MY PROFILE (or similar) been completed for thechild/young person named in this plan?

It is useful to attach a My Profile (or similar) to the My Plan so that other professionals working with the child/young person can understand a little about them before they start working with them. This can aid the professional in their planning and will empower the child/young person as they will feel their voice has been heard and listened to. It may also help the professional to communicate effectively with the child/young person especially if the child/young person has any communication difficulties.

Writing the Needs, Outcomes and Actions

My Needs:

  • The needs must be specific to ensure that the correct outcomes can be written.
  • The needs must be specific to the individual person they are being written for. This is important when writing a family plan so that other professionals can easily identify which need is for which person.
  • The needs should not be written in terms of a service that is needed. For example ‘child/young person needs a referral to speech and language therapy’ is not a well written need. ‘Child/young person needs support to be able to develop a way of communicating clearly with those around them’ would be more specific and would allow for greater creativity when thinking about the outcomes and actions.
  • The needs should not be general but should reflect the specific difficulty currently experienced.

My outcomes:

  • Once you have written your specific needs, you can think about the short term, medium term and long term outcomes you and the child/young person/family wish to achieve.
  • Outcomes should be based on what the child/young person/family will be able to do in the future that they are not able to do at the moment.
  • Breaking down the long term outcomes into smaller more achievable steps will empower people as they see progress being made.
  • Outcomes should not be written in terms of a service or intervention that will be used. For example: ‘child/young person will access 10 sessions of counselling’. A better way of expressing this would be ‘child/young person is able to talk about the things they are worried about and has found 1 strategy to help cope with their anxiety’.
  • Outcomes should be written in plain English and be free from professional jargon.
  • Each outcome should be matched to each specific need and they should be SMART
  • Specific – clear, precise and unambiguous
  • Measurable – targets that are backed up by numbers, percentages or verbal confirmation
  • Agreed – with the young person and/or their family to ensure the individuals are willing to work towards the same goals
  • Realistic – in terms of timescales, resources available and the capacity and ability of the individual concerned
  • Timed – realistic time scales which may need to be broken down into short term, medium term and long term outcomes

Actions:

  • This section focusses on what will be done to try and achieve the outcomes.
  • This section should not name people or services but should reflect the creative ways that have been identified to meet the outcomes.
  • You need to think about any financial implications of the actions agreed to ensure that there are resources available to achieve them.
  • Actions need to be realistic and achievable.

Resources:

  • This section should reflect what the family can achieve for themselves as well as who or what else will support them.
  • This is the place to identify specific people or services that will be used to meet the identified actions.
  • You need to ensure that the people identified are in agreement with the actions they are expected to undertake and you have considered how you will obtain feedback from them.

For further support on writing effective action plans there is Outcomes Planning training. Information for this can be found here.