Direct Payments question

Reasonstobecheerful

Our social worker put in place emergency support for our young adult who was going through a crisis last year, but they then went on long term sick and the funding took months to begin. We were never asked to do a Financial Assessment and to my knowledge we don't have a Budget Plan or I haven't been told about it if we have. We couldn't find a PA suitable to work with our young person due to huge anxiety. Funding started earlier this year but our young person was in a crisis and not able to be supported beyond immediate family until now. As a consequence, we have built up quite a fund of Direct Payments as it has taken around 8 months for our young person to be ready for support due to anxiety. We have now finally found a PA that our young person feels happy with but slowly so as not to overwhelm but for only 4 hrs pw not the 30 hrs that was approved as at the moment this is too much for our young person. We asked social services for further psychiatric support and the next email we received was saying they want to do a Financial Assessment so only now have I realised that our Direct Payments were not handled correctly by the local authority.

My question is, our family member desparately needs this support but will the Financial Assessment mean they will ask for the return of the so far unspent funds? We are having to pay a fair bit more per hour to find the right person for our young person so we will have to put this all on hold now if they ask for the funding back. Any advice please?

poppy123456

A financial assessment is to determine how much the person has to pay towards the care they receive, unless they are a dependant child and then this doesn't apply.

Having had experience of Direct Payments, I do know that if the money hasn't been used, they can reduce the amount of hours you receive and also take the money back that hasn't been spent.