Personalisation Project

Personalisation?

What is it? 

Well the Department of Health says it means “every person who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, will have CHOICE and CONTROL over the shape of that support in all care settings". This will mean the Personalisation agenda, as it's sometimes called, will be a major shift in the way health and social care providers approach service development and delivery.

How?

Personalisation has meant for most Direct Payments and Personal Budgets which are both central parts of the Personalisation agenda. Direct Payments are cash payments given to service users in lieu of community care services they have been assessed as needing.
The payment must be sufficient to enable the service user to purchase services to meet their needs, and must be spent on services that meet eligible needs. Direct Payments are available across the UK and to all client groups, although as yet they cannot be spent on residential care. They confer responsibilities on recipients to employ people, often known as personal assistants, or to commission services for themselves. Personal Budgets, on the other hand, are an allocation of funding given to service users after an assessment.
Users can either take their Personal Budget as a Direct Payment and managing it themselves, or leave councils with the responsibility to commission the services while still choosing how their care needs are met and by whom. They can also have some combination of the two. 

OK so maybe Personalisation is the hot topic for  social and health care…

but what does it mean for our LGB&T communities and those who care for us, support us and our chosen familes? 

Well, in order to give LGB&T people choice and control over their care and support, they need to have accessible, sensitive mainstream services as well as the opportunity to get support from specialist services which are often provided by our community and voluntary sector, after all, mainstream services may not be ready to deliver the new agenda to the LGB&T community, but the question is,