Under personalisation and the NHS Personal Health Budget scheme, service users are allocated a budget to commission their own services rather than passively accept what a local authority provides. Depending on their needs, individual may choose to pay for training, a cleaner or a respite break.
In theory the budgets should be liberating, but worries about the practice in some areas were expressed at a conference on making personalisation work for black and minority ethnic (BME) mental health service users, held on the day the Department of Health PHB pilots ended.
The event, organised by National Survivor User Network for mental health and partners, heard that the temptation for councils to divert personalisation cash was particularly high for local authorities serving large BME communities; these tend to be in inner cities that have had a disproportionately high cut in their budgets.
