Personal budgets

Personal budgets

A personal budget is an amount of funding that can come from education, health and/or social care. Any agreement to provide a personal budget/direct payment will be related to a specific need and outcome to be met in a personal health plan, care plan or EHC Plan. The funds must be spent on that and nothing else.

Personal Budget - Social care

What is a social care personal budget?

A personal budget in social care is an agreed amount of money from your local council, determined after a needs assessment, to fund the support your child needs, giving you more choice and control over how it's spent, often through direct payments to arrange your own services or a managed budget where the council organises it.

Decisions regarding personal budgets for social care in York are made via the Resource Allocation Panel (RAP) and are based on assessed need either because of a child and family assessment undertaken by a social worker or an early help assessment undertaken by a lead professional. The assessing professional will present their recommendation to the RAP for approval.

Knowing how much their budget is and being able to make decisions about how it is spent will give young people and their families more control over the services they receive. This figure is not means-tested and is based upon assessed need.

Expected timeframes

Resource Allocation Panel is held every 2 weeks and you can expect to have a response from your allocated worker within 3 weeks regarding the outcome.

Personal Budget – Education (SEN)

What is a personal education budget?

A Personal Budget is an amount of money identified by the local authority to deliver provision set out in an EHC plan where the parent or young person is involved in securing that provision. (9.95 SEND Code of Practice 2015).

When may you request a personal budget?

During the process of preparing or reviewing an EHC plan a parent or young person can request that all, or part, of the provision required to meet the outcomes of the EHC plan be provided through a personal budget.

In some cases a personal budget could allow for the arrangement of more flexible or personalised provision. When an EHC plan is written it will set out the outcomes that must be achieved by a given deadline.

It will also set out the provision required to meet those outcomes and whether they will be provided by an established, existing service or through the use of a personal budget or a combination of both.

A personal budget is usually requested at the point when the summary of the assessment document is shared with the family, at the draft plan stage, or when the EHC plan is being reviewed. If the Local Authority does not agree to a personal budget it will also inform you of how this decision can be reviewed.

How it works

While the local authority will look positively at the request for a personal budget there are limitations to how personal budgets can be used. The Local Authority would consider if:

• The personal budget can be arranged without having an adverse impact on other services which the local authority provides or arranges for children and young people. The reason for this is that in some cases it is more cost effective to purchase a service that covers the whole of York. As this service has already been purchased it is not possible to pay for this service a second time through the allocation of money for a personal budget to allow an individual arrangement to be made.
• For example, for speech and language therapy, then it will be more cost-effective for that service to provide for that child. A personal budget will not be agreed upon, as this would not be an efficient use of resources.

If you want to buy a service to go into your child's school, this would require the written consent of the headteacher/principal or person occupying an equivalent position.

The Local Authority will also need to consider if the use of a personal budget to arrange services is an efficient use of resources. The local authority has a duty to use public money in the most efficient way possible.

Management of the personal budget

Once the EHC plan and the personal budget have been agreed the family or young person needs to decide how they would like to manage the finance. They can choose from the following options, or use a combination of them:

• A direct payment – where individuals receive the finance to contract, purchase and manage services themselves. Recipients of a direct payment need to be aware that they may then have responsibilities as an employer as well as for DBS (Disclosure and barring service) and insurance arrangements.
• A third party arrangement – where funds (direct payments) are paid to and managed by an individual or organisation on behalf of the child’s parent or the young person. In this case the management individual or organisation will be responsible for the duties as an employer although they may charge a fee.

If a personal budget is requested, the Local Authority will inform you if this is possible and the process to appeal this decision.

Where the Local Authority does not agree to implement a personal budget the decision can be reviewed through requests in writing to the Head of SEND through email: [email protected] who will consider this decision within 14 days.

Personal Budget – Health

A Personal Health Budget (PHB) is an amount of money to support a person’s identified health and wellbeing needs, which is planned and agreed between the person (or their representative) and the NHS professionals involved in their care.

For more information visit Personal health budgets page of the NHS England website.