Councils Get What They Deserve Over Personal Care Budgets

Care services minister Phil Hope has given a rocket to councils that are failing to provide information about personal budgets to disabled and older people.

He said it was “not good enough” that many councils in England were still not offering proper assistance on the budgets, almost two years into the government’s Putting People First (PPF) programme to transform adult social care.

Hope was responding to a “mystery shopper” survey by disability charity Livability. It contacted more than 100 councils responsible for social care and sought information about personal budgets, which enable eligible disabled and older people to arrange their own care and support.

Of 103 councils approached, 45% had no information about personal budgets on their websites, 50% misdirected telephone inquiries about them, 22% were unable to offer any information at all and just 3% could recommend any additional sources.

Portsmouth city council and the City of London authority emerged as the best performers, both scoring maximum marks on Livability’s criteria. Barnet council in north London came third.

A separate survey of 500 disabled young adults, carried out for Livability by researchers nfpSynergy, found that 87% had never heard of personal budgets and 54% did not know the name of their local council responsible for social care.

Mary Bishop, the charity’s chief executive, said the findings of the two surveys were extremely worrying. With just over 12 months of the three-year PPF programme to go, there was “woefully inadequate” awareness of something that had the potential to transform the lives of disabled people.

Mark Harper, Conservative shadow minister for disabled people, said:

“There is clearly a role here for central government to show more leadership and to impress upon local authorities the importance of making these opportunities available for disabled people.”

Hope said councils had no excuse not to be providing adequate information and advice on personal budgets, which he expected to hit the 200,000 mark later this year.

The minister acknowledged, however, that the Department of Health might need to be more prescriptive. “I do think we have to make it much clearer what information and advice councils should be prescribing.”

Under PPF milestones, all English councils should be offering personal budgets by this April. By April 2011, 30% of all eligible users of social care services should have a budget.

The Scottish government has issued consultative proposals for a 10-year strategy, mirroring PPF, under which self-directed support, including personal budgets, would become “the mainstream mechanism” for delivering social care.