Simon Duffy explains how person centred planning can help people with learning disabilities to obtain the all important keys to citizenship, and leave institutionally-based services behind them

There is always a tension between the kind of planning that professionals must do as part of their job and the planning that an individual might do for his or her own life. This is not an impossible tension to manage, but that tension is at its greatest when people try to do person centred planning (PCP) at the same time as re-providing or closing large congregate services. No perfect reconciliation is possible, but this paper will outline steps that can be taken to make resettlement processes as person centred as possible.