Personal Budget and Direct Payments

Personalisation means thinking about education, health and care and support services in an entirely different way. This means starting with the person as an individual with strengths, preferences and aspirations and putting the person at the centre of the process of identifying their needs and supporting them to make choices about how and when they are supported to live their life the way they want to.

A personal budget is an amount of money allocated to deliver all or some of the services and support set out in an Adults care plan, a child’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, Child in Need plan, or Continuing Care and support plan. A personal budget can be paid to a person, providing they are over 16 as direct payments to manage themselves and buy the support or service and pay for it. For example, employing people you want to support you, buying equipment or short breaks.

As of March 2023, the number of people using a Direct Payment in Somerset was 1,643. A further breakdown of number of people, weekly net costs and average weekly cost is set out below:

Many people have care and support through a Direct Payment. The Council do not have access to how people utilise their Direct Payment and therefore the data on people supported by the Council is for commissioned care only. The Council will be undertaking a survey of people utilising a Direct Payment to better understand the impact Direct Payment recipients have on the care market.

Personal Budgets allow people to have greater control on how their care and support is delivered. It is important that people can choose to have a Direct Payment or Individual Service Fund (ISF) when appropriate. Somerset Council will:

• Improve access to Direct Payments in a timely way.
• Develop our Individual Serviced Fund (ISF) offer.