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Dear All, I need help - can anyone give me any information on a 'framework for individual support' dubbed OPTRA (I know that the 'O' stands for 'objective' - and I think that the rest goes something like: 'plan', 'transmission', 'response', 'assess'; although I'm not too sure of this). I have come to hear about this framework from participants in my ongoing PhD research (staff at a day opportunities centre for people labelled as 'having learning disabilities'). Apparently, staff are intending to use 'OPTRA' in a forthcoming push to make the service they provide more 'person-centred'. None of the staff that I have spoken to about this thus far have been able to offer me any background info (admittedly, the person in charge is away at the moment), so I am having to find this for myself (I have already carried out a preliminary search via 'Google' and 'PsycINFO' - with no luck). Also, I am keen to put together a critique of the way in which these sort of frameworks (etc) operate to create a divide between 'disabled' / 'non-disabled', i.e. the idea that in order to, do the best by / bring out the best in, disabled service users, one needs to resort to some 'specialist' (predesignated, controlled) mode of interaction appears to place labelled individuals apart from the 'rest of us' - like, just acting normal around 'them' isn't (good) enough, interaction needs to be carefully planned out beforehand (and given some fancy name, like OPTRA - so staff know what to call it when adding it to their CVs). Murray Simpson has talked about this kind of thing(ish) in relation to 'self-advocacy' (Corker and French 1999 - 'Disability Discourse') but I was wondering whether anyone might be able to offer further references or advice / viewpoints on this matter? Regards, Nicky B. ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.