PATH – PERSON CENTRED PLANNING IN ACTION

Need a PATH? A person-centred plan? 

This is a planning process not a training day. Let us facilitate your planning and refocus your story whilst strengthening you and your group, team, family, staff or organisation. 

This tool uses both process and graphic facilitation to help any group develop a shared vision and then to make a start on working out what they will need to do together to move towards that vision. 

• Is your team or family stuck? 

• Want to move on, but haunted by the past and cannot get any useful dialogue started about the future? 

• Facing a challenging transition into a new school or setting? 

• Leaving school? 

• Bored with annual reviews, transition plans and review meetings? 

• Want to find a way of making meetings and planning feel more real and engaging? 

• Need an approach, which engages a young person respectfully together with his or her family and friends? 

• Want the ultimate visual record of the process of a meeting, which will help everyone, keep track? 

• Want to problem solve and plan for the future of a small or large group, service or organisation up to the size of an LA 

Give your team the opportunity to pause and reflect on what matters most to them about the work they do. The act of listening to each other creates relationship and strengthens trust and inclusion within the team – in creating a shared vision, groups of people build a sense of commitment together. They develop images of the future we want to create together, along with the values that will be important in getting there and the goals they want to see achieved along the way. Unfortunately, many people still think vision is the top leader’s job. In schools, the vision task usually falls to the Headteacher and/or the governors or it comes in a glossy document from the local authority or the DfES. But visions based on authority are not sustainable. 

Using the planning tool PATH (Pearpoint, Forest and OBrien 1997) and other facilitation sources we use both process and graphic facilitation to enable the group to build their picture of what they would love to see happening within their organisation/community in the future and we encourage this to be a positive naming, not just a list of the things they want to avoid. 

Outcomes 

1. To create a shared vision 

2. To name shared goals 

3. To enrol others 

4. To strengthen the group 

5. To explore connections and needs 

6. To specify an Action Plan 

7. To create a visual graphic record of the whole event 

Process Content 

PATH is a creative planning tool that utilises graphic facilitation to collect information and develop positive future plans. 

PATH goes directly to the future and implements backwards planning to create a step by step path to a desirable future. (Inclusion Press, 2000). These tools were developed by Jack Pearpoint, Marsha Forest and John O’Brien to help marginalised people be included in society and to enable people to develop a shared vision for the future. 

PATH can be used with individuals and their circle of support, families teams and organisations. 

Both MAP and PATH are facilitated by two trained facilitators – one process facilitator who guides people through the stages and ensures that the person is at the centre and one graphic facilitator who develops a graphic record of the conversations taking place in the room. 

Follow the link below to read a detailed thesis by Dr Margo Bristow on the use of PATH by educational Psychologists in the UK. 

AN EXPLORATION OF THE USE OF PATH (A PERSON-CENTRED PLANNING TOOL) BY EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGISTS WITH VULNERABLE AND CHALLENGING PUPILS 

The findings indicate that PATH impacted positively and pupils attributed increased confidence and motivation to achieve their goals to their PATH. Parents and young people felt they had contributed to the process as equal partners, feeling their voices were heard. Improved pupil- parent relationships and parent-school relationships were reported and the importance of having skilled facilitators was highlighted. Although participants were generally positive about the process, many felt daunted beforehand, possibly due to a lack of preparation. Pre-PATHplanning and post-PATH review were highlighted as areas requiring further consideration by PATH organisers. Recommendations to shape and improve the delivery of PATH are outlined together with future research directions.