Accessing Personal Budgets

What is a personal Budget?

YOU’RE the best person to decide what’s right for you. A personal budget gives you more choice and control over the kind of social care support you use – and how it is delivered.

A personal budget is money from the council for you to spend on the support you need to help you live more independently.

Personal budgets can be used to buy support from both the council and other providers. Your money can be spent creatively, mixing and matching services from different organisations, and tailoring your support to your individual preferences.

Do I have to manage my budget myself?

If you want to manage your budget and arrange your support yourself, you can. But if you’d prefer to have services provided and your budget managed by the council, that’s OK too. There are lots of ways things can be organised to meet your needs.

How do I get one?

Anyone 18 or over, who is living in the community and eligible for social care, can ask for an assessment for a personal budget. It’s a fairly straightforward process, led by you. Your care manager will help you, and you can involve friends, family and carers at each stage, if you want to.

How much will the budget be?

That depends on your social care needs – which you will identify when you do your assessment

What is a self-directed assessment?

The first step to getting social care support is having an assessment. This is when you and a care manager look in detail at what kind of support you need to live your life as independently as possible.

Anyone 18 or over can ask for an assessment.

It’s called a self-directed assessment because you lead the process. You can also involve friends, family, your carer, or anyone else you trust.

What happens in an assessment?

A care manager will talk to you about any difficulties you may be having, and what help you think you need. Together, you will fill in a questionnaire. The questions are about things like looking after yourself, getting around and staying healthy.

Your care manager will talk with you about how much support you feel you need in these areas. This information will help them to identify your needs, whether you’re eligible for support from Leeds Social Care and how that help can best be provided.

They will also talk to you about what your personal budget can and can’t be used for, how you want to receive and manage the money, and whether you’re entitled to any benefits or other funding along with your personal budget.

What happens after the assessment?

If you’re eligible to receive social care support, the answers you’ve given in your assessment will allow your care manager to calculate how much your ‘indicative’ personal budget is. This is not the final figure, but will give you an amount to use as a guide when you go to the next step and start building your support plan.

The final amount will be agreed when your support plan is approved, to allow for any changes.

What is a resource allocation system?

To be in control of planning your social care support, you need to know how much money is available for your personal budget. The council uses a tool called the Resource Allocation System (RAS for short) to work out

this amount.

During assessment for a personal budget, you will have filled in a self-directed assessment questionnaire. The questions on this form have a number of points attached to them. When these points are all added up, the total number equates to an amount of money, which will be your personal budget.

At this stage, the amount is known as an ‘indicative’ budget – an approximate amount that gives you a figure to go on while you put together your support plan. This amount will be firmed up once your support plan is agreed.

What if I don’t agree with the amount?

The indicative budget will be right in most cases, and you should aim to build your support plan within that amount of money.

The final amount won’t be decided until your plan is approved, so there is still time for adjustment if, during support planning, you find that you can meet your needs using less money. If that happens, your final personal budget will be less than your indicative budget.

Or it may be that you believe more money will be required to meet your needs than the indicative budget suggests. If this is the case, please feel that you can discuss it with your care manager. Situations like this will be looked at on a case- by-case basis to make sure your final budget amount is fair, and will meet your eligible needs.

What happens after resource allocation?

Once you know how much your indicative budget is, it’s time to put together your support plan. This is where you plan (with help if you prefer) how you will