Person-Centred Planning Isn’t Just a Form — It’s a Conversation

November 12, 2025

📘 Blog 1 of 7 in our Person-Centred Planning Series
Tailoring Support: What It Means and Why It Matters

Links to all 7 blogs in this series are at the bottom of this post.

It’s easy to see person-centred planning as a process — a form to complete, a box to tick, a document to store. But truly individual planning begins with a different mindset. It’s not about filling in paperwork — it’s about starting a conversation. This is exactly what commissioners look for in learning disability tenders, domiciliary care bids, and home care submissions — credible proof that people are genuinely at the centre of their support.

🗣️ Ask First, Plan Second

Person-centred planning starts with curiosity. Before we can plan, we need to ask:

What matters to the person — not just what’s the matter with the person?
What do they enjoy, value, and want to achieve this month, this year, and long-term?
What would a good day look like — and what currently gets in the way?
Who are the people that matter most, and how do we involve them well?

Too often, planning jumps straight to services. But the best plans begin with the person’s language, priorities and rhythms. This human start point consistently lifts tender scores across service types — from complex care (where goals must align with risk and clinical governance) to NHS IUC/OOH/primary care interfaces (where safe escalation and choice must coexist).

📄 The Plan Is the Product of the Relationship

If the conversation is honest, open and ongoing, the plan largely writes itself. It reflects who the person is — their words, goals, preferences and cultural identity. Inspectors and evaluators are alert to the difference between boilerplate prose and genuine, lived detail. High-quality plans typically show:

Voice: First-person (“I prefer…”) or clearly attributed phrasing (“[Name] told us…”).
Specificity: Concrete preferences, sensory needs, communication styles, and daily routines.
Outcomes: Small, trackable goals connected to “what good looks like” for the person.
Review cadence: When and how progress will be checked, with who, and what will trigger change.

Ask yourself: could any paragraph be pasted into someone else’s plan without change? If yes, it isn’t person-centred yet. When we help teams tune their evidence, our 📝 Bid Proofreading service often starts by removing generic filler and tightening the link between what the person said and what the plan commits to do.

🎯 From Needs to Strengths (and Why It Scores)

Commissioners still require needs and risks — but they reward providers who build from strengths. That means showing how natural relationships, community assets, tech aids and personal interests reduce dependency and improve outcomes. In domiciliary care, that may be practical independence at home; in learning disability, it’s often participation, communication, employment or volunteering.

Strengths-based practice is also a value-for-money argument when you evidence it properly. If a goal-focused plan reduces avoidable hours, failed visits, or incidents, say so — and quantify it. Our 🎯 Contract Continuity & Evidence support helps teams turn everyday delivery into “commissioner-ready” dashboards and short case studies, so tender claims are backed by data.

🧩 Tailoring in Complex Care: Safety + Dignity

In complex care, tailoring isn’t optional — it’s the safety mechanism. Plans must integrate PBS (where relevant), clinical competencies, escalation trees, and consent/mental capacity considerations. The goal is to honour the person’s preferences while showing robust controls for seizures, dysphagia, rescue meds, skin integrity, suction, or night-time risk. Commissioners look for:

Competence mapping: who can do what, who signs off, and how competence is reviewed.
Escalation clarity: observable cues and step-by-step actions (including on-call/111/UCR/UTC).
Proactive PBS: antecedent strategies, alternatives to restrictive practice, and incident learning.
Lived outcomes: more community time, fewer ED attendances, reduced restrictive interventions.

If your model blends health and social care, reference the interfaces explicitly. Our 🚑 NHS IUC/OOH/Primary Care bid page shows how to describe safe handovers (SBAR), digital records, and feedback loops that matter to NHS evaluators.

🧭 Conversations That Lead to Real Outcomes

Person-centred planning is only persuasive when it changes life, not just paper. Four conversation prompts that consistently generate trackable outcomes:

“What does a good day look like?” — then schedule one small action this week that moves toward it.
“Who do you want to see more of?” — map relationships and agree practical steps to connect.
“What would you like to get better at?” — frame a skill goal and pick a simple measure.
“What gets in the way?” — identify barriers (pain, sensory triggers, transport, routines) and remove one.

When teams document these tiny commitments and report them as “inputs → activities → outcomes → evidence”, commissioners can see progress clearly. If you need help standardising this story-shape across services, our 📚 Bid Library & Process Design creates reusable templates so everyone writes in a scorable way.

📘 One-Page Profiles: Small Page, Big Impact

One-page profiles (OPPs) aren’t a fad; they’re an orientation tool. They help unfamiliar staff get it right first time, and they calm families because key details are visible. Commissioners like OPPs when they are:

Visual and specific (photos, words the person uses, “please don’t…” items).
Practical (how to greet, how to support communication, simple risk prompts).
Linked to the full plan (so they’re a summary, not a separate universe).

We often audit OPPs during 🧭 Strategic Reviews & Positioning, aligning them with safeguarding cues, cultural identity, and reasonable adjustments that evaluators expect to see referenced.

🔎 Evidence That Scores Under MAT

Under the Procurement Act’s shift to Most Advantageous Tender, strong person-centred content is precise, checkable and easy to mark. Consider building your planning section around five sub-heads (and mirror these in the scoring guide):

Discovery & voice: how you learn “what matters” and record it in the person’s words.
Goals & outcomes: how you set, track and report progress (KPI + narrative).
Safety & rights: consent/MCA, risk proportionate planning, escalation, PBS.
Inclusion & identity: culture, faith, sexuality, language, and accessible information.
Review & learning: how feedback changes the plan and service.

If you’re close to deadline, a fast uplift from our 📝 Bid Proofreading can move a “good” narrative to a scorable one without changing your model — we sharpen signposting, cut duplication, and surface evidence.

🧪 Mini Case Study (Tender-Ready Style)

Context: LD supported living, 24/7. Anxiety spikes and sleep disruption leading to day-time fatigue and missed community activities.

What mattered: “I want to go swimming twice a week and not be exhausted.”

Plan: evening routine co-designed; sensory adjustments; consistent bedtime prompts; graded exposure for pool setting; visual schedule; buddy support; bedtime screen-time limit agreed by the person.

Evidence after 8 weeks: 2x swim sessions/week sustained; self-reported energy ↑; incident notes ↓ 46%; sleep latency ↓ ~35 minutes. Family noted “calmer evenings.”

Commissioner angle: simple, person-led changes linked to measurable outcomes; reduced avoidable behaviour-related incidents and better use of community time. This is the kind of concise “inputs → activities → outcomes → evidence” story we standardise through 🎯 Contract Continuity & Evidence.

🏠 Tailoring in Domiciliary & Home Care

In home settings, tailoring must survive the realities of travel, timing and short visit windows. Three quick wins that also score well in domiciliary and home care tenders:

Continuity scheduling: define “known worker” and trend it; families feel the difference.
Visit choreography: document preferred order (chat first, then meds; tea before wash).
Missed-call risk controls: proactive SMS/IVR checks and time-to-alert thresholds.

Each of these can be evidenced quickly and improves outcomes with minimal cost. If you’re not sure where to start, use our 📄 Bid Triage & Assessment to select opportunities where your approach is already a fit — and avoid stretching into models you can’t safely deliver.

🛡️ Safeguarding, Consent & Voice

Truly person-centred planning must sit inside robust safeguarding and consent. Evaluators will look for:

MCA/LPS readiness: capacity assessed for each decision; best-interest process recorded.
Speak-up culture: how staff escalate concerns and how learning changes practice.
Accessible information: easy-read summaries, pictorial schedules, and digital prompts.

When we perform service health checks or Board-level reviews, we often find the model is good but the evidence thread is weak. A short, focused 🧭 Strategic Review aligns paperwork with what’s already happening, so tenders and inspections land better.

🧱 Common Pitfalls (and Easy Fixes)

Copy-paste plans: Fix with templated prompts not templated answers.
“Activity” not outcomes: Add one measurable outcome per goal; trend monthly.
Missing review loop: Set a cadence and name who leads it; log “you said, we did”.
No link to cost/value: Show how tailored support reduces avoidable spend (failed visits, incidents, travel waste).
Annex sprawl: Centralise with a smart index; our 📚 Bid Library work prevents duplicate, outdated attachments.

🧰 Make Your Planning Approach Tender-Ready

Map your method: discovery → plan → deliver → review; one clean diagram.
Standardise evidence: an outcomes snapshot + one case study per person per quarter.
Embed continuity: define, measure and report “% visits by known worker”.
Publish a mini pack: KPI trends, governance actions and two lived-experience vignettes — the backbone of renewals. Our 🎯 Continuity & Evidence offer builds this rhythm for you.
Pressure-test responses: run a red-team pass before submission; if time is tight, use 📝 Bid Proofreading for a fast scoring uplift.

📈 Where This Helps You Win

When person-centred planning is visible and evidenced, you’ll feel it across the pipeline:

Higher tender marks on outcomes, continuity, safeguarding and value.
Calmer mobilisations because plans are ready and staff are briefed by OPPs.
Stronger renewals under MAT, thanks to quarterly “evidence-engine” habits.
Fewer complaints and avoidable incidents — because daily practice matches the person’s voice.

🤝 Need a hand putting this into practice?

Pick what you need, when you need it:

📝 Bid Proofreading — rapid clarity and compliance lift before submission.
📄 Bid Triage & Assessment — focus effort on opportunities you can win and deliver.
📚 Bid Library & Process Design — reusable method statements, annexes and a smart index.
🎯 Contract Continuity & Evidence — quarterly KPI packs, case studies and renewal-ready reporting.
🧭 Strategic Reviews & Positioning — tighten your model, positioning and value narrative.

📚 Explore the full 7-part series on tailoring support in person-centred care: