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The CCG should consult with you regarding your preferences and commission care services which maximise personalisation and offer individual control. If your preferred care arrangement is more expensive than the CCG wants to commission and if they can demonstrate that your needs could be met in a less expensive care setting, they do have the right to commission the less expensive care service. The CCG have a responsibility to take into account your preferences and to ensure that moving you to a new care setting or selecting a different care agency will not have a detrimental effect on your health. The CCG should also demonstrate that they have investigated all available options (such as negotiating a reduced rate) for keeping you in your current environment before deciding to change your care.
CCGs cannot impose a charge on you or your family because they feel that your care home is more expensive than they would like to pay, even if they believe that it provides you with non-essential services because those services could not be clearly separated from the rest of the care you receive in your care home.
If you decide that you would like a personal health budget your Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) should work with you to set personalised care and wellbeing goals based upon the assessed needs detailed in your care plan. The CCG will offer you an indicative budget based upon these goals. CCGs may also offer free and independent brokerage services to help you create a support plan and to find appropriate services.
Personal health budgets can be managed in different ways. For example, you may decide that you wish to receive the cash so that you can buy in and manage the care and support services that have been agreed upon in your support plan. However, you do not actually have to handle the money or manage the care yourself if you don’t want that responsibility. Opting for a ‘notional budget’ gives you choice and control whilst leaving the complexity of employing and managing care services to the NHS.
Between 2009 and 2012 the Department of Health ran a pilot programme for personal health budgets. Oxfordshire was chosen to be one of the in-depth pilot sites. Our team at Beacon were heavily involved in the pilot through Age UK Oxfordshire from the outset which gave us the opportunity to influence key strategic decisions from an independent perspective, on behalf of our clients.
For more information we recommend that you visit NHS Choices’ personal health budgets webpage here.