Tag Archives: personal budgets

Success of personal health budget following Norfolk pilot

January 21, 2013   Carers, disability, health, Norfolk

Scheme will be rolled out across the country next year.

By Adam Gretton Saturday, January 19, 2013
6:30 AM

A scheme to give patients more control over their care has been hailed as a success by health chiefs and patients in Norfolk who trialled a NHS pilot.

NHS Norfolk and Waveney rolled out a personal health budget initiative two years ago, which is set to be made available across the country from next year.

The primary care trust (PCT) is pioneering the scheme in the east and allows patients with long-term, complex needs to have control over how money is spent on their care.

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NHS to pay for singing lessons and hotel stays

November 30, 2012   Carers, disability, health, Older care

Tens of thousands of people will be able to get money from their doctors which can be used for activities including singing lessons and hotel stays.

Personal health budgets enable people to choose what help they need and who to buy it from.

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

7:00AM GMT 30 Nov 2012

Norman Lamb, the care minister, said the option of having a ‘personal health budget’ would be made available to some 56,000 people in England with significant health needs. It would “put them back in control of their care,” he said.

The idea is to give people the power to choose exactly what care they need for their condition or disability – and buy it from whoever they like – rather than having it decided and provided by the NHS.

Charities for the elderly and disabled have broadly welcomed the initiative, which has been trialled for three years, but there are worries about some people misusing the money.

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Do elderly people really want to choose and manage their own care budgets?

November 20, 2012   Carers, Older care

The government’s so-called “personalisation'” policy affecting care means chaos and cuts for day centres – and it will send older people like me round the twist

The Great Croft day care centre in Camden, London.

The Great Croft day care centre in Camden, London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Last week I went out and forgot that I’d left the dog’s rice cooking. Twice. Even though I’d reminded myself, out loud, just before leaving, to turn the gas off.

Help! Soon I’ll be needing assistance; someone popping in to help me organise my life and check that I’m not totally farmisht and storing my dinners in the broom cupboard, like Auntie used to do.

There will be some pretty complex organising needed, what with the government’s “personalisation” fad, AKA “sort–it–out–yourselves-you’re-nearly-dead–anyway-what-do-we-care?” Council will give me a weekly budget, then I can choose to pay a carer, which makes me an employer, who must pay national insurance; or go to a day centre, which will charge me a daily rate, once it has spent ages working one out. This is what the lovely Great Croft day centre in Camden has had to faff about doing. To help the old persons to decide, it must pay a seven-hour-a-week co-ordinator to sort out 70 volunteers/befrienders (usually retired professionals), who need training, CRB checks, and to be sensitively matched up with, and sent out to, the elderly people, who are cracking up trying to work out what they want, how much they’ve got, whether their families or the local post office are nicking their money (yes, it does happen), and what the hell personalisation means.

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