Personal Budgets
About
A Personal Budget is a way to give families control and flexibility to choose and pay for the services they need. It is an allocation of funding to meet a child’s, young person’s or adult’s (18 years plus) assessed and eligible, unmet support needs.
A Personal Budget is not additional funding, it is about using existing funding in a way that suits your needs better.
What is it for?
A personal budget can be used for services across education, health, children’s social care, adult’s social care or a combination. For information about the services currently available for a Personal Budget, please click here.
Who is eligible?
To have a Personal Budget, you must first have worked with a practitioner to complete an assessment of your (or your child’s) needs. If the assessment shows that you have unmet needs, then some or all of these may be eligible for support and you can choose how the support is delivered via a Personal Budget. For more information about assessments please click on Assessment of Need for care and Support.
Managing a personal budget
Once assessed and agreed, there are 4 ways in which a personal budget can be managed:
- Direct Payment – funding is given directly to the family by the Local Authority for them to manage as a cash budget
- Managed Budget – the Local Authority arranges and pays for services on behalf of the family. Families do not need to manage any of the funding themselves
- Individual Service Fund – a third party organisation or agency manages the Personal Budget on behalf of the family with support provided in line with the person’s wishes.
- Combination – a mix of the three options above
Adults will be means tested under the Adult Social Care Charging Policy. This will determine if they need to make a financial assessment contribution towards the cost of their care. Please click here for more information
Personal Budget policy
The joint Personal Budgets policy (applicable to children’s and adult’s services) sets out the following information:
- Eligibility
- Funding included within a Personal Budget
- Calculating the Personal Budget
- Agreeing the Personal Budget
- Managing and Using the Personal Budget
- Negotiation and Disputes
- Inclusion and Exclusion of Services
Please click here for the Personal Budgets Policy.
Process
The different processes and procedures to follow for Personal Budgets are
- Personal budget linked to Educational Health and Care Plan
- Personal Health Budget
- Personal Budget linked to children’s social care only
- Personal budget linked to adult’s social care
Other Information
Further resources on Personal Budgets are available through the ‘Making it Personal’ project, funded by the Department for Education. This includes guidance for parents, commissioners and suppliers as is available here.
For more information about Personal Health Budgets, speak to your Community Nurse or Lead Health Worker.
For more information about Personal Budgets for social care, please contact: Social Care Direct on 0345 8 503 503 or email social_care_direct@wakefield.gov.uk
Last reviewed: 13/03/2018