£4m million boost to give patients control of their health care

A pilot scheme that offers patients more choice and control over their healthcare was given a £4 million boost today by Care Services Minister Paul Burstow.

The money will be used to support personal health budget pilot sites set up and run their pilot schemes.

Personal budgets allow local NHS trusts to put individuals in control of how, where and from whom they receive their healthcare, in partnership with the local NHS.

A personal health budget can either be arranged by the NHS, an independent third party, or the individual can be given the money to buy the care themselves through a direct payment.

Through personal budgets, the Government is giving more power and control to patients – a key them of the Health White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, which was published on Monday.

Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said:

‘I am fully committed to piloting personal health budgets to inform the way we implement them more widely and how we can combine them with social care budgets. We want to give people more choice and influence over their healthcare – giving them direct control of the cash is a powerful way of achieving this.

‘A similar scheme has been a huge success in social care, letting people choose services that fit in with their life, rather than fitting their life around the service. Today’s investment into personal budgets for healthcare will ensure that patients using the NHS will be able to benefit in the same way.

‘The evidence from social care has shown that people tend to spend less on better things for themselves. Proving that individuals can actually be better guardians of the public purse than institutions, while at the same time ensuring services suit people’s individual needs.’

This commitment comes as a DVD is launched to help councils educate staff and health partners to encourage them to introduce social care personal budgets to existing service users. The DVD shows examples of how successful personal budgets have been in social care.

The DVD reflects the full range of equality and diversity issues and demonstrate different ways of using a personal budget. It also includes an introduction from former GMTV presenter Fiona Philips whose father care was transformed by having a personal budget to meet his social care needs.

Personal budgets in both health and social care give people choice and control over their care and gives them real power to hold services to account.

Fiona Philips said:

‘I have two very different experiences. With my mother the personal budget didn’t exist, and we had to fight for everything we got. My mother was carted off to a day centre that she didn’t really want to go to.

‘For my father it’s completely changed. Dad has Alzheimer’s so he can’t say what he wants out of his personal budget, and I’ve filled out all the forms. We have a brilliant package for him, which relieves me because I have a small family, I have work, and it’s a real reassurance that he’s being looked after.

‘It’s just all the things that keep him living as normal life as possible, maintaining his dignity as well. Just because you are getting older, just because you are disabled, or are very ill have chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be able to maintain your dignity, which is very important.’

Michael Collins, a 27 year old deaf-blind man from Oldham who receives an individual budget via direct payments said:

‘Before I felt really trapped. Now that I’m on a personal budget I feel free.’