Working with Individual Plans: users' perspectives on the challenges and conflicts of users' needs in health and social services

In Norway, an Individual Plan (IP) is a statutory right and a tool for cooperation between the client in need of long-term, coordinated services and the public services. This study analyses the explicit needs of users, how the various actors in the IP process met these needs, as seen from the users’ perspective, and, finally, how disability influenced the outcomes. Participants expressed physical, psychological and social needs. These needs were similar for persons with physical or psychiatric health conditions, or for persons with an innate or acquired disability. However, time elapsed since a disability had been acquired did make a difference. The municipality or district of residence, the administrative and legislative boundaries, the interpretation of those and the coordinators’ position within the hierarchy of the system all affected how well users’ needs were met, indicating the existence of tension. This tension between the external conditions or framework of services and user participation may be an explanatory factor for the slow implementation of IP

Individual Plan in rehabilitation processes: a tool for flexible collaboration?

This article explores how different collaborative strategies between clients and service providers mediate with the quality of individual plan processes in Norway. The main question concerns how clients and service providers interact and perform their roles during their collaboration. An inter-professional group of six health and social researchers collected the data, which consisted of in-depth interviews with 13 clients and 13 service providers. Three interactional discourses emerged from the data: collaboration led by the client, collaboration led by interaction, and restrictive interaction. A complex relationship between the three interactional discourses challenges the service providers’ role behaviour in practice. The service provider must accept each client as a unique individual and develop a role performance that takes into account the individual’s desired level of participation. This requirement complicates the client–service provider collaboratio

Individual Plan in rehabilitation processes: a tool for flexible collaboration?

This article explores how different collaborative strategies between clients and service providers mediate with the quality of individual plan processes in Norway. The main question concerns how clients and service providers interact and perform their roles during their collaboration. An inter-professional group of six health and social researchers collected the data, which consisted of in-depth interviews with 13 clients and 13 service providers. Three interactional discourses emerged from the data: collaboration led by the client, collaboration led by interaction, and restrictive interaction. A complex relationship between the three interactional discourses challenges the service providers’ role behaviour in practice. The service provider must accept each client as a unique individual and develop a role performance that takes into account the individual’s desired level of participation. This requirement complicates the client–service provider collaboratio

Working with Individual Plans: users' perspectives on the challenges and conflicts of users' needs in health and social services

In Norway, an Individual Plan (IP) is a statutory right and a tool for cooperation between the client in need of long-term, coordinated services and the public services. This study analyses the explicit needs of users, how the various actors in the IP process met these needs, as seen from the users’ perspective, and, finally, how disability influenced the outcomes. Participants expressed physical, psychological and social needs. These needs were similar for persons with physical or psychiatric health conditions, or for persons with an innate or acquired disability. However, time elapsed since a disability had been acquired did make a difference. The municipality or district of residence, the administrative and legislative boundaries, the interpretation of those and the coordinators’ position within the hierarchy of the system all affected how well users’ needs were met, indicating the existence of tension. This tension between the external conditions or framework of services and user participation may be an explanatory factor for the slow implementation of IP