As the Getting a Life project has progressed, more local areas have become aware of the pathways and the approaches that can lead to better outcomes for young people with a learning disability.

Here, Ian Hart, Person Centred Planning Partnership Manager, at Suffolk County Council, talks about how he has linked person centred reviews to the Getting a Life pathways, helping professionals think differently about how they can support young people to achieve their aspirations.  Ian says:

“I’ve been training professionals from a range of backgrounds in Person Centred Reviews for several years.

The training always seems to inspire people to think and work differently, returning to the workplace energised and ready to make an impact.  However, this is where the challenge begins, because of colleagues who have not necessarily been on the same journey, and because the training shows what a good review looks like, but not how to achieve positive outcomes for the individual.

Addressing these challenges can be solved in two ways. I recently delivered a course to a “virtual team” of multi-agency staff, who as part of developments in transition in Suffolk will become part of a single transition team.  The starting point is they all have a sound understanding of Person Centred Thinking and Reviews.

The second area to address was how to use a person centred approach that leads to positive outcomes for young people. On the afternoon of day three, I introduced the Getting a Life graphics, highlighting the four pathways and linking information gathered in a Person Centred Review to Housing, Health, Work and Relationships.

Housing, in my experience tends to be little more than a thought at year 9, but becomes a bigger concern as young people progress. I have found that work, health and relationships are constants in most reviews, and can become areas of major worry.

On the training course, I split the team into three groups, giving them the work aspirations of three young people I have recently supported: to be a drummer, a referee and a racing driver.  The groups used a “blue sky thinking” tool to look at each aspiration. Within a few minutes, they had pages full of positive and possible ideas of how these could happen.

The feedback afterwards was amazement that they could produce so many good ideas, when historically the young people would have been talked out of such “impossible” dreams.  Transition pathways have historically been the move from Children’s Services to Adult Services, when the reality should be using the Getting a Life Pathways toward getting a life.”

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