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Together, UK Mental Health Charity working alongside each person with mental health issues on their journey towards greater wellbeing. Trusted experts in service user involvement

Personalisation and self directed support

What is Personalisation?

Personalisation is one of Together's key strategic objectives. It offers significant opportunities to people who use services. Here is what this important part of the Government social care reforms is about:

Personalisation is:

  • choice
  • flexibility
  • control
  • people knowing what their needs are
  • people having control over how those needs are being met

Across Government, the shared ambition is to put people first through a radical reform of public services.

It will mean that people are:

  • able to live their own lives as they wish
  • confident that services are of high quality
  • safe and promote their own individual needs for independence, well-being, and dignity

This holistic approach is set out in 'Putting people first: a shared vision and commitment to the transformation of adult social care' launched on 10 December 2007.

What is Self Directed Support?

Self-Directed Support had its origins in the United Kingdom in the Independent Living Movement of people with physical impairments. They campaigned in the 1980s and 1990s for the introduction of Direct Payments. Direct payments are available in most authorities.
A direct payment is a financial benefit that the council provides to enable individuals to arrange their own support.
In 2003 ‘In Control’ was set up by a number of people who had disabilities. They sketched out a 7-step model of Self-Directed Support. This system was tested and improved by individuals, families and local authorities from 2003.
The term self directed support is now used across authorities and is an overarching term which encompasses a variety of ‘tools’ to give people greater levels of control over how their support needs are met.

What is a personal budget?

A personal budget is an allocation of money that a person can use to design and purchase support to meet their social care needs.

What is an individual budget?

An individual budget is similar to a personal budget but can incorporate a number of different funding streams including the Independent Living Fund, Supporting People, Disabled Facilities Grant, Integrated Community Equipment Service, and/or Access to Work as well as social care funding. Individual budgets were recently piloted in thirteen local authorities.
For information on individual budgets visit the Department of Health's publications, policies and guidance.

What is a direct payment?

A direct payment is one of the options to receive a personal budget. Direct payments are cash payments paid directly to the person, for them to buy their own support. A direct payment specifically means the payment of one’s entitlement to support as a cash sum directly into a personal bank account.

A tenant at one of Together’s housing projects recently successfully applied for funding for a short break at the seaside. ”We’re so pleased with this result. It was the first direct payment we’d applied for, the procedure wasn’t as daunting as we thought and it took just 3 weeks from application to being told John had been successful.”

What does the term RAS mean?

The term RAS often used by professionals stands for a Resource Allocation System. This is a method of calculating an individual or personal budget often following the completion of a self assessment questionnaire (sometimes referred to as a SAQ).

What do we do about Personalisation and self directed support?

Find out in our e-bulletin.

Reference Materials

Download our reference documents and conference reports.