Personal Health Budgets

What is a Personal Health Budget?

A Personal Health Budget is an amount of money to support a person’s identified health and well being needs, planned and agreed between the person and their local NHS team.  A personal health budget enables patients to plan and manage their own care (and people who are not able to do this will be able to appoint a nominee). They will be able to choose the people that deliver their care and the times it is done. They will also be able to purchase some things that the NHS can not provide. The important thing is that the individual’s ‘personal health outcomes’, which will be agreed with the NHS are met.

When a Support Plan has been agreed, the patient can decide whether to have a ‘direct payment’ to manage the budget themselves, or to ask NHS Somerset to manage a ‘notional budget’ on their behalf.  A budget can also be managed by a third party.

What support can we give?
Compass Disability Services involvement in this project is to support the patient to draw up their support plan and manage the direct payment. This will be done by one of our two advisors, who will visit you in your home and work with you to help you devise a plan that works for you, whilst being within the budget suggested by the health authority.

Our aim is to encourage people to be as independent as possible, enabling maximum choice and control, whilst removing the stresses involved in such matters as employing your own staff. We operate a payroll service for those Personal Health Budget users who decide to use part of the budget to employ their own staff.

Who can receive a Personal Health Budget?
Personal health budgets are initially aimed at people who are eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare, who have had a right to ask for a personal health budgets from April 2014 and a right to have a budget from October 2014. Clinicians can also offer personal health budgets to others that they feel may benefit from the additional flexibility and control. The NHS Mandate commits to a further roll out of personal health budgets to people who could benefit from April 2015.



 

Funding for training:
PHB holders can apply now for funding from Skills for Care to pay for training for themselves or their personal assistants (PAs). The funding can also be used to meet the cost of travel or hiring replacement support if a PA attends training during working hours. More information is available here.
Courses funded so far have included; leadership and team building skills; first aid; health and safety; diplomas in health and social care; communication skills; food safety; problem solving at work. This fund is limited so PHB holders are encouraged to submit an application at their earliest opportunity.
Please encourage and support any PHB holders you work with to complete an application form and take advantage of the opportunity to receive this funding. Since the launch, over 200 people have downloaded the application form and funding has been distributed to PHB holders for training for over 170 personal assistants (PAs). Find out more about the types of courses covered and get the application form.
Funding for those in receipt of a direct payment from their local authority or self-funding will reopen shortly, subject to confirmation of funding from the Department of Health.
For more information about PHB visit the following website: http://www.nhs.uk/choiceintheNHS/Yourchoices/personal-health-budgets/Pages/about-personal-health-budgets.aspx