direct payments

skater_kat

anyone have any success with obtaining direct payments (adults) with mental health reasons (or aspergers)?
i am also confused with interchangable terminology: personal budget, direct payment, self directed support, individual budget, indidivual payment - ugggh! its a minefield.
also confusing it whether to deal with adult social care (social services) or mental health NHS trust.
does a CPN carry out a social/communit care asessment?

any advice appreciated. may be best to PM.

daska

At very simplest: Social Services assess and, if you're very lucky, assign a budget to be used for your care. Either you manage it or, if you are incapable, they do it for you (if you're lucky). A lot of the terms you list seem to be used indiscriminately and interchangably.

Traditional services is the term used when Social Services assess, organise and pay for the number of hours of personal care they deem necessary.

Direct Payments are a system that was (is?) still used where SS assess the number of hours they deem necessary, and you then spend those hours on personal care. Or they give you an equivalent lesser hourly rate to purchase your own care. Sometimes all the money management is done by a 3rd party agency. I'm a bit vague on the exact rules because I never had them and the people I know who have had them have all told me different things LOL.

Personalised support Plans are the newest flavour and what I've had for the last 2 years. SS assess and assign a budget and develop a 'support' plan WITH you (note the WITH, last year my plan wasnt worth the paper it was written on - and I didn't even print it out LOL). They then give you the money to enact that support plan. It's far more flexible than Direct Payments in that it can be used for services e.g. childcare and equipment e.g. SS insisted I use some of it on a fence for the garden to make it safe for DS2 and suggested that I buy a dishwasher. The idea being that I'd need to spend a good deal of it on support keeping DS2 safe in the garden and keeping the kitchen under control and this enabled me to be more independent. I've also purchased a robot hoover - cheaper long term than spending an hour a week on agency staff. Again, if you're not capable of managing this yourself SS are supposed to do it for you. I'm lucky, I had superb admin skills and I keep everything so I can just about keep on top of it - but it is a little embarrassing when one of your carer's jobs is having to remind you to do her wages.

bagqueen

Are direct payments means tested?

jetta_wales

With the current financial reality the are being tighter and only allowing them for things that your DLA is not enough to cover. Which is right tbh.

skater_kat

hhm yes i have been reading about really high criteria/thresholds for accessing budgets....

someone said about means testing - i think they can ask you to contribute to services provided, but they can't decide your eligibility for services based on your finances. (someone correct me if i am wrong)

i also think that if you do get direct payments these are ignored for benefit purposes eg income for HB or CTB

kurgon

They are not means tested. IN most (but not all) self directed support payments have replaced direct payments, except where the required budgets could not be accessed through this system. Your care coordinator should support you through the application process - all yopu need to do is state your needs.

They do an assessment and this is then 'scored' which gives you an indicative budget. You then formalise a plan on how you want to spend this money, but it should be targetted at recovery.

All areas operate the sytem slightly differently and indicative budgets have been gradually reduced. They should not take into account any other benefits that you receive but should base it on your current needs.

sunnyone

They are means tested, I get an assessed every year but get nothing because we have savings and we fail the financial assessment, we dont have huge savings either.

daska

kurgon wrote: »

They are not means tested.

Are you in the position to instruct my local council to stop asking me to contribute then? I look forward to my care costing me less!

daska

Yes they are means tested, there's something called the 'fairer charging policy' which councils are supposed to implement.

Essentially there is a protected level of income and above that they can ask for all or a percentage of the difference between your income and the amount of your budget. Some, not all, benefits are included when they assess your income (excluded ones I can think of off the top of my head are DLA mobility, Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits). I am currently required to contribute £33.45 a week to my support budget and this amount is deducted at source so I have to make up the difference.

IF you decide you don't want to pay for care but SS say you need it they can organise the care they assess you as needing and take you to court to get their money back!

kurgon

In mental health the self directed support are not means tested - or at least in my local area they are not. Other forms of payment such as direct payments are, but the payments known as self directed support, a specific iussue for mental health are not related to your own budget.
For direct payments you have to contribute - and some call their direct payments 'direct payments personal budget' - this is not the same as SDS.
I also do not know if these are national as they started as a trial in Hull and Liverpool in 2009 and were supposed to be piloted in Early Intervention in 2010 but the role out came much quicker and they were adopted across the board in the local services (for whom I work).
The best thibg is to check what your local services are acrtually offering. SDS or direct payments.

daska

kurgon wrote: »

In mental health the self directed support are not means tested - or at least in my local area they are not.

I think that's a key point. I did a quick google and this was the first hit: Self Directed Support for Mental Health Service Users in West Sussex. One of the complaints reads:
“I was told my DLA wouldn’t enter into it but it seems it does…She did the
financial assessment to come up with a figure for ‘disposable income’
which is the same as my care component for DLA’ (Service user)"

I also went back to In Control and they don't limit the concept of Self Directed Support to Mental Health.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that what you're saying doesn't match what I've been told for 2 years. And given the huge confusions caused by my local SS that doesn't mean much LOL