Individualized participatory care planning for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities: a qualitative descriptive study

Abstract Background Goal setting for persons within health and social care environments can be a challenging task; although health and social care settings aim to address a person’s care needs, the literature tends to focus on health. Person-centred care should encompass the goals/needs/wants of the person, whether these goals focus on career, relationship, and/or health domains. To understand how a person-centred participatory goal setting process is carried out in a care environment, we used an integrated knowledge translation approach. Methods We conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with community-care staff to understand a person-centred planning process, including key components and impacts. Results The interviews provide a thorough understanding of an implemented approach to person-centred plans, including its creation, implementation, and benefits (for the person-supported, family, friends, and staff). Person-centred plans provide a map with which to plan activities based on a persons’ goals, interests, and capacities, and have positive impacts for the person-supported, family, friends, and staff. Conclusions Our study highlights how a community-care organization can facilitate person-centred services through person-centred plans and has implications for wider uptake of person-centred plans in community-care organizations.