What is a personal budget?
A personal budget is an amount of council funding made available to meet your social care and support needs, following a care and support assessment.
Your care and support plan is used to calculate a weekly amount of money to be used towards meeting the cost of your care.
Your personal budget may be used to:
- arrange a care agency or Personal Assistant to provide you with care and support at home with things like getting dressed, preparing a meal and washing
- arrange day activities
- arrange and pay for respite care - to give you and your carers a short break
- pay for any support you may need when your carer takes a break
Ways to take a personal budget
You can choose from a range of options for managing a personal budget. This includes:
- Direct Payments – weekly money for support is sent directly to you, or your nominated individual. You make and oversee your own care and support arrangements
- the Local Authority (Cambridgeshire County Council) managing the budget – often described as a ‘commissioned’ or ‘managed’ service. This usually means we take on all responsibilities related to finding and arranging care and support to meet your assessed needs
- a care and support provider or a third-party organisation (such as a home care provider or an independent living charity) managing the budget on your behalf – this is known as an Individual Service Fund (ISF)
- any combination of these approaches
You can choose how to spend your personal budget, provided that it meets your eligible social care needs and helps to meet the outcomes agreed and outlined in your care and support plan.
Personal health budgets
A personal health budget is an amount of money to support your health and wellbeing needs, which is planned and agreed between you (or someone who represents you) and your local NHS team. You can find out more about personal health budgets on NHS.Uk website.
