-Content Expert Stewart Shear
This section includes resources about person, family, and community-centered planning and lifestyle enhancement. It includes tools, planning guides, and examples of practice.
What defines quality of life is unique to each person, but ultimately bolsters their happiness and satisfaction. Core elements of quality of life include:
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- Health and safety
- Social interaction and relationships
- Community participation
- Productive activity
- Self-advocacy and choice
Person-Centered Resources
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Charting the Life Course: A Guide for Individuals, Families, and Professionals - Michelle C. Reynolds and Jane St. John (2012). Published by Missouri Family to Family Resource Center. A comprehensive guide to the Life Course intended for general use by supporters and professionals (free).
- Increasing Person-Centered Thinking Manual - Amado, A. N. and Mc Bride, M. (2001). A resource manual to be used to guide training in person centered thinking (free).
- Essential Lifestyle Planning Toolkit - Skills Development Associates. Multiple planning support tools for people engaged in person centered planning (includes completed examples and is free to access).
- It's My Choice - Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities (2017) - A book of checklists and planning sheets for people to use to empower life decision making using positive supports (free).
Check out this free video to learn more about the Donut sort tool.
Planning in Specific Life Domains
- Positive Behavioral Support in the Home and Community: A bibliography for families. - NICHCY Bibliographies (1997). This is a collection of books, videos, organizations, and publishers for families to use to navigate the many sources of information available on the topics of behavioral disorders and positive behavior support (free).
- Planned Parenthood Curriculum on Sexuality - McLaughlin, Katherine. Training recourses for educators and support staff to support people with intellectual disabilities understand sexuality and relationships (available for purchase).
Quality of Life Questionnaires
- Assessing the Quality of Life of Persons with Developmental Disabilities: Description of a New Model, Measuring Instruments, and Initial Findings - Raphael, D., Brown, I., Renwick, R., & Rootman, I. (1996). A paper that presents the findings supporting a model to measure quality of life with persons with developmental disabilities (free).
- Helping Relationship Questionnaire - Minnesota Department of Human Services. This questionnaire measures the quality of the relationships people being supported have with their support staff (free).
- PBS Quality of Life Questionnaire - Hieneman, M., Yeagley, M., Cessna, T., Smith-Kong, T., Downs, H., Fazzio, D., Spiker, S., & DeFranco, R. (2015). This questionnaire can be used to evaluate the support efforts impact on various areas of a person's life (free).
- Personal Outcomes Scale: Administration and Standardization Manual - Loon, J., Hove, G., Schalock, R., & Claes, C. (2009). A guide to using the Personal Outcomes Scale that incorporates universal and culturally specific items in measuring quality of life (free).
- Real Life Quality Standards - Nerney, T., Carver, P., and Kovach, K. (2005). This is a questionnaire that is useful in determining areas within a person's life where quality improvements can be made and also how to support the person with making those changes themselves (free).
- The Family Quality of Life Scale - Beach Center on Disability (2012). This questionnaire measures several aspects of families' perceived satisfaction in terms of quality of family life (free).
