Parents do not understand personal budgets
New SENDirect service promises better support
Two out of three families of children with disabilities and SEN feel they have no control over the education, health and social care help they receive for their disabled child. New research carried out by the eight charities that make up the SEND Consortium suggests that parents are confused about the support available and how best they can access it.
The research highlights the need to significantly improve parent carers’ understanding and use of personal budgets, if the Government’s increased focus on “personalisation” is to be successful.
The Consortium carried out a survey of 850 parent carers of children and young people with SEN or disabilities. Almost half of those surveyed rated the help they receive as poor, while nearly three quarters of respondents wanted more control over the help they receive.
Budgeting for care
The survey found that, under the current system, just ten per cent of people use a personal budget and only five per cent say they use direct payments. Of those who said they did not use a personal budget, nearly 60 per cent said that this was because they did not know about them. Similarly, nearly 40 per cent of people who said they didn’t use direct payments, reported that it was because they did not know about them.
A personal budget is an indicative allocation of funding given to service users to meet their assessed needs. Service users can then agree with the local authority what the personal budget will be used for and who will provide the services. Alternatively, service users can take their personal budget as a direct payment and arrange to support themselves. Direct payments are cash payments provided directly to individuals or carers who then use them to arrange and pay for their own support services. For example, this money could be used to employ someone to help with support or as a payment to buy services or equipment.
Under major changes to the SEN system, to be introduced in the forthcoming Children and Families Bill, the Government will be introducing combined education, health and care plans, and the option for accessing a personal budget, for all families of children and young people with identified SEN and disabilities. Personal budgets will not be obligatory, but parents will have the right to apply for one.
Help for parents
From 2015, the SEN Consortium is planning to introduce SENDirect, a new brokerage service in England which it says will help families to get the most out of personal budgets. The service will aim to support parents to understand how personal budgets work and what they can do with them, and provide tools to help families manage budgets effectively. It will also enable local providers to promote their services and understand more about the needs of children and young people with SEN and disabilities in their area.
Jolanta Lasota of the SEND Consortium believes that personal budgets and direct payments should provide families with greater choice about and control over the services their children access. However, she is concerned that many parents do not understand personal budgets and that gaps in the market are creating barriers to families from using them in the ways they would like. “Unless something is put in place that changes this, the Government’s emphasis on personalisation will be meaningless”, she says.
The SENDirect project is funded by the Department of Health and the Department for Education. The SEND Consortium plans to pilot SENDirect with nine local authorities later this year, with a scheduled launch due in March 2015.
More information on SENDirect can be found at:
sen-direct.org.uk
