Monday, February 01, 2010
Individual Plans?
I was just perusing Amazon.com and I saw a handy book about writing Individual Service Plans. It includes hundreds of pre-written goals for clients.
Huh?
How do you write an individualized plan using pre-written goals? Do they mean that they have included hundreds of goals that other clients have chosen and maybe you could use them to get some idea how other people write plans?
I don't understand how you could go in an ISP meeting having already decided what goals the client should have and how they should be written. I will admit that we used to do that 15 or 20 years ago... but not in this day and age. I believe that the word individualized means individualized to the client... not to the staff. The client must tell you in their meeting what goals and objectives they want to work on.
I also offer a book on writing Individual Service Plans. It's called Individual Service Plan Guidelines and it is available at my web store www.mosscanyon.com .
However, I do not offer any pre-written plans. I do describe how to arrive at a truly client driven plan, and offer some suggestions on how to write the plan, but there are no pre-written plans included in my book. Sorry.
I also see that someone left a review of my book How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities on the Amazon site. The person leaving the review was disappointed that it wasn't a true "How To" book. Of course, in the book description I say that it introduces readers to a wide range of principles used in teaching daily living skills and that it is not a textbook, but it is written in a conversational tone for easy reading.
Since we support individuals, there can be no complete "How To" book. All we can do is learn some basics and apply our knowledge to the individuals we support. I agree that our jobs would be a lot easier if we could just say, "Here is how to do this with every client," but that isn't very realistic.
Huh?
How do you write an individualized plan using pre-written goals? Do they mean that they have included hundreds of goals that other clients have chosen and maybe you could use them to get some idea how other people write plans?
I don't understand how you could go in an ISP meeting having already decided what goals the client should have and how they should be written. I will admit that we used to do that 15 or 20 years ago... but not in this day and age. I believe that the word individualized means individualized to the client... not to the staff. The client must tell you in their meeting what goals and objectives they want to work on.
I also offer a book on writing Individual Service Plans. It's called Individual Service Plan Guidelines and it is available at my web store www.mosscanyon.com .
However, I do not offer any pre-written plans. I do describe how to arrive at a truly client driven plan, and offer some suggestions on how to write the plan, but there are no pre-written plans included in my book. Sorry.
I also see that someone left a review of my book How to Teach Daily Living Skills to Adults with Developmental Disabilities on the Amazon site. The person leaving the review was disappointed that it wasn't a true "How To" book. Of course, in the book description I say that it introduces readers to a wide range of principles used in teaching daily living skills and that it is not a textbook, but it is written in a conversational tone for easy reading.
Since we support individuals, there can be no complete "How To" book. All we can do is learn some basics and apply our knowledge to the individuals we support. I agree that our jobs would be a lot easier if we could just say, "Here is how to do this with every client," but that isn't very realistic.
