[mld]

Thank you.

[ebonycat]

I dont have a personal budget but get direct payments for one off things like aromatherapy it takes 9 mths to get something approved by the care manager before I get a payment by which time the quote from the therapist is out of date.

[Rosemary - Rethink]

ebonycat, on 20 January 2011 - 02:34 PM, said:

I dont have a personal budget but get direct payments for one off things like aromatherapy it takes 9 mths to get something approved by the care manager before I get a payment by which time the quote from the therapist is out of date.

Hello Ebonycat,
that sounds frustrating. I wonder if you could get this changed to a Personal Budget. maybe using an advocate or the citizens advice service would help negotiating on this?

From what I have heard for Personal Budgets people get the budget agreed at the beginning and then they spend it as they have agreed. But I've heard conflicting things about how it then works. People often get it paid directly into their bank accounts on a weekly basis (or into the bank account of a relative who is looking after it for them). But they do have to produce receipts, and I'm assuming that the receipts are to show what they've spent the money on, not to claim back payments that they've made out of their own money. And I know of someone who has some of the money paid into an account, and some of it paid direct to a service.

Maybe other people can tell us how Personal Budgets are paid for them? And more importantly how this was agreed with the people who pay it?

[Able Scribe]

Rosemary - Rethink, on 20 January 2011 - 05:13 PM, said:

Hello Ebonycat,
that sounds frustrating. I wonder if you could get this changed to a Personal Budget. maybe using an advocate or the citizens advice service would help negotiating on this?

From what I have heard for Personal Budgets people get the budget agreed at the beginning and then they spend it as they have agreed. But I've heard conflicting things about how it then works. People often get it paid directly into their bank accounts on a weekly basis (or into the bank account of a relative who is looking after it for them). But they do have to produce receipts, and I'm assuming that the receipts are to show what they've spent the money on, not to claim back payments that they've made out of their own money. And I know of someone who has some of the money paid into an account, and some of it paid direct to a service.

Maybe other people can tell us how Personal Budgets are paid for them? And more importantly how this was agreed with the people who pay it?

This is clearly open to abuse, and that is exactly what councils are doing with it.

First, some erroneous assumptions. Many cuts ago, people lost the access to a Care Co-ordinator. So there is some advice and protection clearly absent.

Next, the system is already being played by social service departments, who shut down care in the community - Day centres, continuing care and specialist protection for vulnerable people and next minute are offering to re-open services provided that the clients pay for it. What a Racket - and you Rosemary are the albeit blunt instrument with which to manipulate the situation and mould disabled people into sweet, compliant suckers. I have heard of cons and travesties, but this one takes the biscuit! I notice you make no mention of Cuts and Closures - and the way the most vulnerable people are being targeted. We are push-overs, and that is exactly what the Personalisation bull-dozer does to us. Run along now, Rosie, your kind of damage we can do without.

[Rosemary - Rethink]

Hi Able Scribe
I realise that you and others feel let down by the some of the changes that have been made. But Rethink are trying to help people to work out what this is all about. The personalisation agenda has come from the government (as have the cuts). Councils are doing personalisation (and making cuts) because the government is driving it forward.

[Admin - Rethink]

Hi Able Scribe, please bear in mind the rules that we have around communicating with civility on this board. Your language towards Rosemary is unfair and very unpleasant.

[Unmatabet]

thanks