The Think Local Act Personal Partnership (TLAP) has announced it is to lead work to support the NHS and local authorities develop the potential of personal budgets across health and social care.
TLAP will work with project partners the NHS Confederation and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), and alongside leaders of the health and social care system to identify how to maximise the benefits and minimise challenges associated with implementation.
Drawing on the experience of people using health and social care services, carers and the personal health budgets “going further faster” sites, the programme will seek to build cross-system leadership and support for personal budgets. The aim will be to meet both health and social care needs and to promote equal access for groups who risk being excluded from their benefits.
There will also be a focus on identifying how the health and social care market can respond to personal budgets used for both health and social care.
The work is funded through a Department of Health grant. Minister of State for Care and Support, Norman Lamb said:
“Personal budgets are a powerful way to enable people to join up the health and care they need, giving them and their families much more control, helping them to live their lives and can be immensely effective in terms of improving wellbeing. This grant to Think Local Act Personal will help the partnership make greater integration of budgets a reality.”
TLAP Director, Sam Bennett said:
“Integration can mean a lot of different things but the most important perspective is that of the people who rely on healthcare and support and for whom the differences and disconnects between the two have never made any sense. Integrating personal budgets across health and social care should mean that people have control over all the support they need to live their lives and are able to make the choices that are right for them. It also presents an opportunity for health and social care to come together around what works for the individual so that the whole system is geared towards putting people at the centre of decision making. This is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss and TLAP is delighted to be taking this work forward.”
NHS Confederation Interim Director of Policy, Jo Webber said:
“For individual service users, any kind of dividing line between services provided and paid for by the NHS and by social care can seem arbitrary and bureaucratic. Joint personal budgets for health and social care can help ensure services are integrated right where users want them to be – at the point of delivery. This piece of work will help make seamless care a reality for everyone who chooses to use a personal budget to plan their care.”
SCIE Chief Executive, Andrea Sutcliffe said:
“Personal budgets across health and social care offer a real opportunity to focus and organise services effectively around what matters most – the person using those services. Too often that potential is lost as the person-centred focus goes missing in a maze of organisation complexity, bureaucratic procedures and lack of support. This project will hopefully help to engage and energise everyone involved, to realise the potential of personal budgets and to truly make a difference for the people and communities we serve.”
Media Contact:
Jaimee Lewis, Senior Communications Adviser
Think Local Act Personal
Tel: 07850 774 453 email: jaimee.lewis@scie.org.uk
5th Floor 2-4 Cockspur Street London SW1Y 5BH
