People who enter the social security system can feel like they lost their power and that suddenly others are in charge of their lives. At the beginning of the 1990’s, professional workers in Slovenia began noticing the need for people they took care of, regardless of what they suffered from, to receive the support they required. In order to achieve this, a shift in the minds of professional workers was needed. In 1994, they adopted individual treatment planning from Great Britain, modified it and searched for ways to realize it. With individual treatment planning, the residents are able to once again feel self-confident and hope for a better tomorrow. Service users are able to express their wishes and realize their goals through a personal conversation. It is necessary to follow the rules of the individual treatment planning process and its implementation.
The master’s thesis explores the applicability of individual treatment planning in the Institute for Education, Work and Care Dobrna (in Slovene: Center za usposabljanje, delo in varstvo Dobrna). The theoretical part studies and introduces Slovene and foreign academic literature in the field of individual treatment planning for persons with special needs. The empirical part uses a quantitative method for collecting data through a survey. The aim of the research is to determine how many service users are involved in the planning and implementation of their individual treatment plan, how the employees shape and implement the individual treatment plan, what the most common problems in the planning and implementation of an individual treatment plan are as well as to determine positive results of a successfully implemented individual treatment plan. The survey was conducted among the institution’s employees and service users who are already involved in a planning process and are a part of an individual treatment plan. The results show that the majority of service users know what an individual treatment plan is, that it is adapted to their needs and that they participate in the designing and implementation of the plan, which is understood as the most important part of the method. However, they believe that they can only influence the changes to the plan and implementation in certain cases. Additionally, most employees—the planners and providers of individual treatment planning—knov that it is provided in their facility, and believe that they design and implement the individual plan together with the service users. They establish a working relationship, examine the life of a service user, design the plan, and the user can select the time and place of their meeting. The employees implement the individual treatment plan together with the service users in a determined yet unobtrusive way. At the same time, they preserve the perspective of the service users and their will.
Both users, planners and contractors need support in their work to facilitate the planning and implementation of an individual plan. For the employees the most important part of their work is the support of the entire team of those involved in the implementation of the individual treatment plan. They recognise that the greatest obstacle they face is the lack of means, one of the more important tools in achieving their goals.
It is necessary to recognise how important the process of individual treatment planning and the realization of its goals are because through active participation in the planning process the quality of the resident’s life improves. The principle of equal opportunity is exercised, which leads to better quality of life.
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