Person-Centred Planning in its Strategic Context: Reframing the Mansell/Beadle-Brown Critique

Valuing People, the English national strategy launched in 2001 is founded on the twin principles of self-determination and social inclusion. It promotes a vision of people with intellectual disabilities in the mainstream of life. To achieve this goal, it seeks to integrate a wide variety of elements, in which person-centred planning (PCP) is one. The Mansell and Beadle-Brown review makes many interesting points about PCP in this context. We reframe their critique in three main ways: by more fully recognising the extent to which PCP is an intrinsic element of the national strategy, helping to operationalise its core principles; by crediting the ways in which individual planning and action are intended to become part of one continuous process; and by showing how the strategy addresses the challenge of scale by prioritising quality rather than quantity in implementing PCP, with the aspiration of creating a virtuous spiral of positive change.