Personalisation is all about you being in control of the support you need. With self-directed support, services will be more personalised to your specific needs and individual circumstances.
You will be able to direct your own support and have complete control over the services you receive. But don't worry, family members, friends, your practitioner and other professionals can help you do this. There will always be help available should you need it.
What does self-directed support mean for me?
Self-directed support will mean that:
- you will be in control of the money you receive for your support and have your own individual budget
- you can choose how to spend the money for your support
- you can choose things about your life, for example, who you get your support from and at what times
- you can get help to do things if you want it
Who is self-directed support for?
Self-directed support is for anyone living in the community who gets help that is paid for by social services. You will need to complete a personal budget questionnaire. If you are eligible for support you will be able to develop a support plan about how you can spend your personal budget for support to meet your individual needs.
The council will be encouraging clients to think creatively about the services they use and can help clients look at the different options available to them.
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Here is the easy read version of our personalisation information for you:
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Options4U
Options4U is a user led organisation that has recently been set up in North Lincolnshire. It is a group of disabled people who are willing to help others understand and participate in the new system of funding personal care. Options4u have put together a DVD of how personalisation is working for groups of people and you can view the DVD online.
Individual service funds
The introduction of personal budgets has been a key step to enabling people to live their lives the way they want and be supported how and when they want to be. However if people are to benefit from personal budgets they must be accessible to all. This means personal budget holders will be able to manage their own finances with access to the right kind of support for them. This will include a range of different options being available to manage the money.
North Lincolnshire Council offers the Individual Service Fund option (ISF) which is a way of supporting a person to have more control over their personal budget and how their support is delivered, without having responsibility for the money management. This option is where the council lodges the person's allocated budget with a support provider they contract with, ensuring that person has maximum control over the support delivered. The council have developed guidance documents including an easy read version to assist people to consider this option.
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Thinking about employing a personal assistant?
This information is for people who are thinking of employing their own Personal Assistant (PA) and for those that have decided they definitely want to employ a PA. The most important thing is that you decide how your PA will support you, help you, and work with you. You can decide what they will do, how they will do it and when. You're in control.
Adult Social Services together with Sheffield City Council have produced a handbook to help employ a PA. This guidance has been designed and written by people who use their personal budget to employ their own PA.
The guidance comes in a number of different parts:
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Part 1 - Things you need to know to be an employer
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Part 2 - Examples and sample documents useful for employers
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Part 3 - Frequently asked questions
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Part 4 - Skills passport guidance
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Part 5 - Skills passport evidence of learning and development
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Part 6 - What happens in North Lincolnshire
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More information
If you would like to find out more about how personal budgets work for people you can watch some DVDs produced by the Department of Health. They show real life accounts of the implementation and use of personal budgets and the impact they have had on peoples lives. The videos are available on the Putting People First: Transforming Adult Social Care website.
Note: All documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site).