Glossary
Person-Centered Planning
Also called: PCP, person centered planning, person-centered plan
Last reviewed September 30, 2026
The one-sentence answer
Person-centered planning is an approach in which planning starts from what the person wants their life to look like, and then works out what support would get them there — rather than starting from a list of available services and fitting the person into it.
What this means for you
The order is the point. A service-led conversation asks "which of these programs does he qualify for?" A person-centered one asks "what does he actually want to be doing, and what would make that possible?" — and only then looks at what can pay for it.
In practice it means your planning meeting should start with you, not with a form. What matters to you, what a good week looks like, what you want to be different in a year. Services follow from that.
It is easier to describe than to do, and the gap between the two is real. A planning meeting can use person-centered language and still be a service-allocation exercise with a nicer introduction. You are entitled to the real version. If a meeting starts with what is available rather than what you want, it is reasonable to say so and ask to begin again.
This is the philosophy Self-Determination is built on, and it is why the program works the way it does. An individual budget you direct yourself only makes sense if the planning that produced it started from your goals. An independent facilitator can help run this kind of planning if you want someone whose only job is your interests.
For the detail-oriented
Person-centered planning underpins the IPP process across regional center services, and is also embedded in federal HCBS requirements — the settings rule includes person-centered planning obligations.
When planning is not done this way
There is a route for complaining that planning was not person-centered, and it is changing, so the answer depends on when you are reading this.
Until 31 January 2027, a complaint about how you were treated goes through the Individual Rights Complaint process under WIC 4731, on form DS 255, to the director of the regional centre concerned.
From February 2027, DDS launches a single grievance process that expressly covers person-centered planning concerns alongside rights violations and residential settings questions. It comes from the federal CMS Access Rule.
A warning about dates, because a lot of material has this wrong. You will see 9 July 2026 quoted as the start of the new process. That was the federal deadline; California's own launch is February 2027. An earlier version of this page repeated the July date, and it was wrong.
Full detail, and how to file either way, is on grievance.
And the point that matters most either way: a grievance about the planning process does not protect a service while you complain. If a service has been denied or reduced, that is an appeal, on a much shorter clock. Do the appeal first.
Still to come: the specific statutory and regulatory basis for person-centered planning in California, beyond the IPP process and the federal HCBS settings requirements described above.