Anyone on Personal Health Budget?

pamr

hi   my 52 year old daughter lives independently.    she has 24/7 care plus double ups for personal care and access into the community.   originally she received DP, and managed the care directly.   a year ago she managed to receive CHC funding and we transferred to a care agency to provide the care.   however, we have had lots of issues with the agency and despite trying to resolve these we go from one problem to another.   
we are now considering asking our CCG if we could transfer to a Health Budget and organise the care ourselves.   
I was wondering if anybody on her had a Health Budget and how did it work.
thanks.

Chloe_Scope

Hi @pamr and welcome to the community! I have direct payments but unfortunately have no experience of a health budget. This is what I have found online. Does she have a social worker that could support the transition? I hope someone on here is able to provide more information, if not I can do some more research and try and support you that way

pamr

thank you very much Chloe.    I have used DP before but once my daughter received CHC funding I changed to using an agency.   I am thinking that a personal health budget would be similar to using Direct Payments but I am unsure.  she does not directly have a social worker, but I think the CCG who organise the funding, have one connected to them.   I just want to be sure as I can if it would work for us before making a request to change.
thank you for the link you sent, I was pleased to see that it was a NHS link.  I have registered and await their confirmation of joining.

many thanks for your help Chloe.

I would still be interested to hear if anybody else I using Personal Health Budgets, and how it works for them.
regards,  pam

Chloe_Scope

Hi @pamr, I'm glad it was useful. Have you managed to get any further with this at all?

forgoodnesssake

My son has a split package of ASC DPs and health PHB.  I manage it all for him and it is indeed very like managing DPs.  They both use a prepaid card (2 separate accounts though!) with an online account from which bills, wages etc are paid and it is topped up roughly monthly from within the allocated budget.

Chloe_Scope

Thank you for sharing this @forgoodnesssake, it sounds like that has really worked for your son

I hope you are getting on okay @pamr!

pamr

the care agency I am using now, say I cannot take any of the staff with me.  they are mostly all good.  they say its because of their contracts.   most of them don't work anywhere else but with my daughter.
CCG say this as well.   cannot understand it.   I would have thought they just give their notice in and then move directly to being employed by us.

forgoodnesssake

No they almost certainly won't be able to do that. There will be a clause in their contract and/or the contract with the CCG that talks about an "introduction fee" or something similar and it may well be in the region of £1000 per support worker. This means that if they leave the agency employment and go straight to work with an existing client, but on a direct basis, they or you have to pay this introduction fee. It is to stop clients "poaching" agency staff. It is commonly done in other work areas too.. Sounds bad though when you hear about it. One thing I was told though by the independent support agency here who help with things like managing PHBs is that they have come across occasions when actually it was still cheaper to pay the £1000 fee and then directly employ the staff (if they are particularly good or well trained for what you need) than to keep on paying agency rates... Just a thought 

pamr

thanks for your reply.   I will have to see whats written into their contracts.   there is 6 of them so it could prove expensive.    do you know of any other way round it.