When defining a new service plan, a goal, sub-goal(s) and plan item(s) must be identified according to the particular needs of the client. Milestones may also be recorded when creating the service plan. Sub-goals may be further grouped into plan groups.
Cúram Service Planning provides a flexible framework on which an organization can build custom plan items to suit their specific needs. This framework includes a Basic Plan Item structure and a Service Unit Delivery structure. The Basic Plan Item allows a case worker to track standard information about an activity such as the expected start and end date, the actual start and end dates, the expected and actual outcome, and the plan item cost. While the name and purpose of Basic Plan Items are pre-defined administratively, Cúram Service Planning also includes a Custom Basic Plan Item to provide the case worker with more flexibility in selecting plan items that will best address client needs at the point of adding plan items to a sub-goal within a service plan. The name and purpose of the plan item can be defined at the point of creation of the plan item.
The Service Unit Delivery allows a case worker to track the delivery of units of a plan item as well as standard information. These details provide a benchmark for the overall service plan progress. Service plan progress and tracking will be explained in more detail later in the guide.
Very often, the best way to achieve the goal of a service plan is to involve the family members or other individuals associated with the client in the execution of the service plan. To enable this, when creating a service plan for a case, a case worker can choose the primary plan participant whose need the service plan is primarily to address from a list of case participants. The case worker can then choose to associate additional plan participants with the service plan as well. These participants can then be enlisted as required in order to achieve individual plan items as part of the service plan. This allows the case worker greater flexibility in helping the client. When creating a service plan, the primary client of the case must be a plan member; however, the primary client of the case doesn't necessarily have to be the primary plan participant on the service plan.
A case worker may assume ownership of each plan item of the service plan or can assign ownership of these plan items to users across the organization or to a plan participant of the service plan. The responsibility for undertaking a plan item is determined by a case worker on creation of the plan item.