Personal Budgets and the Care Act - Using the learning, moving
forward
A Practical Development Programme
Programme outline
In Control is offering an opportunity for up to 10 Councils who
want to use the learning from the last 10-15 years to fully realise
the potential that personal budgets can offer people as part of
successful Care Act implementation. We now have very clear
knowledge about what works best in implementing personal budgets
and this knowledge can quickly be put to effective use in
localities.
This development programme combines place based and
collaborative elements. Participant councils will receive hands on
local support from In Control and access to joint programme
development sessions in order to complete the following
process:
One: A high level stock take
Using the criteria of the three "building blocks of great
support" that have emerged from 10 years of Personal Outcomes
Evaluation Tool (POET) surveys, in many councils, In Control will
support a high level review of current systems and tools used
locally, focussing on the main steps of the care and support
process, including;
• Sign posting and initial response
• Assessment and the identification of outcomes
• Determination of eligibility
• Options for holding and managing personal budgets
• Allocation decisions
• Support Planning
• Plan approval process
• Review arrangements
• Public Information
In particular the review will consider what information is
provided directly to people who ask for help, about how the care
and support system works locally, about how key decisions will be
made and the support and choices available to them throughout the
process. The review will Identify areas for improvement and
recommend required action.
The stock take will be a desktop review of key tools and
paperwork including information leaflets assessment and planning
tools and other relevant documentation. These will be assessed
against the 3 building blocks and areas for improvement
identified. In addition to the appraisal of tools and
paperwork In Control will support a set of one off, on site
structured and facilitated focus groups for key stakeholders;
• Managers involved in supervising care planning and assessment
staff and in ratifying eligibility and allocation decisions.
• Council staff working in assessment and care planning
roles.
• Providers of care and support services.
• People who have recently been through the assessment and care
planning process and their family members.
The working groups will provide insight to recent experiences of
the care and support system in Islington from a range of
perspectives. Participants will use this personal experience of the
care and support system locally to consider the extent to which the
3 building blocks of great support are at play. They will
highlight areas of good practise to be shared more broadly in the
borough and identify practical action required to ensure the
experience of local people is in line with the building blocks of
great support.
In Control will provide a summary of the sessions along with
detail of key issues and findings.
Two: Embedding performance and quality assurance using
the Personal Outcome Evaluation Tool.
In Control will support key performance and practise managers to
embed the POET into the review process and where possible IT
systems. Ensuring routine capture of critical performance
information. Allowing the production of regular live reports
detailing performance against each of the building blocks of great
support.
This will ensure senior managers and other interested people
locally will have access to up to date performance information
detailing the experience of people outcomes for local people who
have support.
In Control support with;
- Provision and licenced use of the POET.
- Support to embed and routinely capture POET responses.
- Preparation of the POET report benchmarking local findings with
those gathered from elsewhere in England.
- Presentation of key findings to key stake holders and
facilitate consideration of implications for strategic
development.
Three: Designing an approach for community
investment
Of course not everything you want to do is achievable by working
at an individual or family level. Often it will make sense to work
in a collective basis with communities. There is much from our
learning to date that is applicable at a wider level so we are
working with councils to re-invent commissioning.
In Control will undertake a design and development session with
local commissioners and other relevant and interested people that
will explore how the learning from personalisation , person centred
planning and in particular the building block of great support
might be applied at a community as well as an individual level.
The session will take participants beyond thinking about
individual support arrangements and consider how a community
centred planning process might provide an alternative to
traditional commissioning mechanisms. We will work with local
commissioners and other relevant people to develop an approach to
community development that transfers the building blocks for good
support from an induvial to a community level.
In Control will facilitate the design process. Should the
council choose to adopt the approach we will also seek to agree
with the council how we can be available to support the
implementation of the approach and undertake an evaluation of its
impact.
Cost and application
The programme is available on a "membership plus" basis at a
cost of £7,000. Participant councils will become Community of Change
members of In Control for one year and have access to the wider
membership benefits as well as the personal budgets development
programme
Contact information:
For more information or express an interest in this
opportunity
Email: admin@in-control.org.uk
or john.waters@in-control.org.uk
Tel: 01564 82 1650, mobile 07403 413476
Last Updated : 08 February 2019. Page Author: Gaynor Cockayne.