Regional Center IPP goals - A quick thought

The goals in the regional center IPP document (and the person-centered plan for an SDP participant – but more on that in a different blog) will be individual to your youth. But in terms of the IPP being the legal document and the document that drives access to services there is one construction element you should have in place. And that’s robust and broad goals proposed by you/your youth/the client. This applies equally to both the traditional system as well as the self determination program/SDP.

I suspect you are familiar with IEP goals (more about this in another blog). These are finely targeted goals. They are designed to address something very specific with very specific outcome targets. But IPP goals are more like “catch-alls”. To be as effective as they can be in the service access process, they should be broad and not too specific, so that more than one service might be accessed to support the goal. For example, say XXX will have access to recreational activities of their choice, not XXX will take karate class. This allows flexibility in the future when requesting access to social rec services.

You also want to make sure to have a goal for EVERY domain in your youth's life. These should include broad topics like: recreation and leisure, education/college, meeting self-care needs, integrating into their community of choice, health, and more. Even if something is covered mostly by a generic resource (like education for a school aged child) include it anyway.

While there is some variability amongst regional centers in what they will accept as goals, I would remind everyone that the CLIENT has the right to have the goals they want to have. And that they have to right to have as many goals as they reasonably want. But if the reality of the negotiation with your regional center is challenging on this point, and you just want to get on with it, just present what you want and work back from there until the regional center team agrees.

Here’s the takeaway: IF THERE IS NO GOAL THERE WILL BE NO SERVICE TO ADDRESS THAT NEED, so it's a good idea to have every domain covered with a goal at the onset. And have those goals constructed so that many related supports for the same life domain can be justified by the same goal.

Although not a lot of focus is put on getting those goals right, to have the most flexibility and justification for the most services getting those goals written right are critical! (And, no, you can’t necessarily rely on your regional center service coordinator to do this.)