Service-User Participation in Coordinated Planning: Power, Possibilities, and Responsibility

In Sweden, people with intellectual disability have the right to participate in planning and decisions about their care and support. Coordinated planning is a tool for interprofessional and interorganizational coordination for a service-user needing cohesive care. The coordinated plan is usually established during a meeting where professionals representing different organizations meet with the person to discuss needs and actions. The study uses Lukes’s theory of power to analyze professionals’ experiences of coordinated planning. The purpose is to analyze how decision-making power, non-decision power, and ideological power can affect service-user participation. The qualitative analysis of the interviews with 17 professionals from different organizations in Sweden reveals that service-users depend on professionals’ exercise of power to be able to make their voices heard and be meaningfully involved in the planning. Professionals need to be aware of their power and responsibility to promote service-user participation and use it to create opportunities for people with intellectual disability to participate in coordinated planning of their care and support.