A Midweek Special - More Tools Than B&Q

It's quite liberating this blogging lark.  This post is a difficult one.  I am passionate about person centred planning, but sometimes it's used, by me as well, as a kind of stalling mechanism or can deflect us from the real work, blind us to the real issues, we've got some tools and we are going to use them!

One day, a few years ago in my job as a person centred planning coordinator, I googled 'WHAT IS THE POINT OF PERSON CENTRED PLANNING' It wasn't a good day.  The first google sponsored link was Castlebeck Care.  Top of the page.  Oh my word.

In a world of SNQs, HAPs, TLAP etc even person centred planning developed it's own alienating language, illustrated by this lazy cut and paste from an email to a friend a few years ago, on another bad day! 

.....Don't get me started - I knew about the 4+1 questions, then somebody mentioned the 4+2 questions and being the true professional I am, I decided to find out. To my relief - it was just the 4+1 plus another question. Perhaps it should really be called the 4+1+1 questions. Which of course adds up to 6. Then I saw that there were another set of questions called the 3+3 questions - I thought momentarily "I must find out what they are (other than the obvious answer of 6)" - that thought passed while I carried on with the almost superfluous work of trying to help people rally their allies and struggle towards an equitable life in the community....anyway then I discovered the '5 whys and the what' and just thought FECK IT.
Maths never was my strong point. I think the 5 whys just means asking why, a lot, to get to the heart of the problem.....Tom Jones would be quite good at it, although that particular 'thinking tool' would be called the '3 Whys and a Delilah'....

There I've said it.  Better Now.  Next week a little corker about something or other.