Planning and action: Comments on Mansell & Beadle-Brown

Mansell & Beadle-Brown (2004) raise a number of concerns about the possible impact of the systematic introduction of person-centred planning (PCP) across services for people with intellectual disabilities in the UK. We too foresee a danger that system-wide adoption of PCP will be characterised over zealous 'selling' of the purported benefits without sufficient attention to the difficulties and without the necessary changes to system architecture to ensure that those involved in PCP have the authority or resources to achieve the plan's goals. If so, PCP will become another fad, and service users, and their families will become even more discouraged, disheartened and alienated by a system characterised by rhetoric rather than meaningful action. Where we differ, is in the interpretation of the existing evidence regarding the impact of individual planning systems in general and, perhaps, in the way forward.