Person-Centered Planning and Disability: barriers and opportunities for improvement in Catalonia

The latest reforms in the intellectual disabilities field are Person-Centered Planning (PCP) and the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). PCP helps individualize support and improve quality of life, whereas the ICF is a global, universal tool defined and developed over a ten-year-long international process involving 65 member states and endorsed by 191 member states, so that a broad consensus was reached for both terminology and classification. Extensive field testing provided for cross-cultural comparability, making the ICF a truly international standard for functioning and disability classification.The principles established in these approaches should be seriously considered in this country, in regard to the new Social Security Act and “Dependency” Act.