Adults Personal Budgets - How we decide what support is needed?

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Adults Personal Budgets How we work out what you could get?

The Council will assess the level of someone's need for each area under their Access to Care Criteria of Critical or Substantial Needs. You can always have someone you trust with you at assessment if that helps you. An assessment means they will speak with you and find out what you need. It helps them work out how much they would have spent on services for you if they were managing your budget and providing those services for you.

Then you decide if you would be happier:

  • if you manage your own budget (direct payments)
  • you would like the council to do it for you (managed or notional budgets)
  • you would like to say who manages the budget but don’t want to do it yourself  (brokerage)

All local authorities a required to be as fair to everyone as they can when they do an assessment. To do this they ask everyone the same sort of questions about what help they might need. The tool used for this in Hackney is a Resource Allocation System (RAS). The RAS uses the costs of current services as a basis. It doesn't suggest what services someone should use to meet their needs.  It gives us an estimated value that someone can use to start planning their care and support. 

If something very helpful costs more the council may still agree to give you the extra money for it. If everything costs less or the whole amount doesn’t get spent this is ok as well.    

Personal budgets are not a benefit and are only to be used in ways agreed by the Council.

What can I spend a personal budget on?

With personal budgets, you can have greater choice and control over how you live and how your care needs are met.

You also have more responsibility for accounting for the cost, what it was spent on and how it helped you. 

There is more information on this in the download section to the side of this page.

Where is the money from?

Personal budgets are starting to replace the old system of the councils Adult Social Care arranging services and managing them for you so it is money that already gets spent on services for people with critical and substantial needs.

Persona budgets are worked out by looking at the money that would be spent on:

  • Personal care at home
  • Care provided in a supported housing setting
  • Day care and similar services (like social activities)
  • Meals on wheels
  • Respite services

These are sometimes called chargeable, longer term services. 

Though the money comes from those services, someone may spend it differently.  We expect that something like 30% of people will make changes to the care they buy?

Related information on Hackney's Local Offer

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Page last modified: 10/10/2023