Bernadette Ryan and Eileen Carey use a case study to describe how person-centred planning was used to prioritise goals for a young boy with Down syndrome

Recent figures show that there were 25,613 people registered on the—National Intellectual Disability Database (NIDD 2007) in Ireland. People with intellectual disabilities, whether in residential care or living in the community, are more likely to experience poor health, resulting in higher levels of physical and/or mental health needs than commonly co-exist in the non-intellectually disabled population (Kwok and Cheung 2007). In addition, it has been suggested that this group of people die at a younger age than their peers who do not have intellectual disabilities (Krahn et al 2006a, Nocon 2006).