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making a difference to the lives of people with severe learning disabilities
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Scotland - Understanding the Funding

Recent government policy has moved towards enabling disabled people and their families to have more control over the funding that provides their care and support, and there are a number of opportunities available.

Self-Directed Support (SDS)

Self-directed support (formerly known as direct payments) provides individual budgets (see below) for people to buy their own support packages to meet their assessed personal, social and healthcare needs. It is about meeting the needs of the whole person in creative and flexible ways, in order to maximize their independence, and allows the people who receive services to have greater control and choice over how their needs are met.

If the social work department agrees that a person needs care services, the person can choose to take the funding directly to buy services themselves. The person takes on the responsibility of organising and managing the way their needs will be met. This may involve directly employing helpers (usually known as ‘personal assistants’) or directly contracting with an agency. This individually tailored practical help can be the gateway to equalizing access to education, training, employment, economic and social participation.

The advantage of such a scheme is that a person can tailor the support needed to suit his or her own preferences and choose who delivers that support. This places the person in control. Whilst it is necessary for the person to consent to this option, they do not need to manage or run the scheme themselves but can nominate another or others to look after the day-to-day ‘business’.

Individuals can receive the help they need to organize and manage their support package from a network of local support services and Local Area Co-ordinators (LACs) which bring practical experience of SDS from disabled peers.

For more information see:

Guardianship Orders

Individuals with complex needs can also have self-directed support using the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 to safeguard their interests.

When a person does not have the capacity to consent to self-directed support, it is possible for the Local Authority to make the agreed funding available to a third party such as a guardian.  Consent is when someone accepts or agrees to something that somebody else proposes. For consent to be legal and proper, the person consenting needs to have sufficient mental capacity to understand the implications and possible consequences of his or her actions. In cases where an individual is judged not to have capacity to consent a Guardianship Order has to be taken out. 

If an adult needs help with making decisions all the time to manage affairs and safeguard his or her welfare, any person concerned with the individuals best interest, such as a family member, can apply to the local sheriff for guardianship. An application for guardianship needs two independent medical reports of incapacity, there are two types of guardianship one to cover financial matters- financial guardianship and the other to cover personal welfare – welfare guardianship. Legal aid is usually available to cover the costs of applying for these orders as it is based on the person with incapacities income rather than the person’s income that is applying for the order.

For more information see:

  • Guardianship and Intervention Orders – making an application: a Guide for Carers (2006) Scottish Executive Tel 0131 622 8283
  • Making Decisions – Your Rights: People with Learning Disabilities (2006) DVD Scottish Executive Tel 0131 622 8283

 Individualised Budgets

Care managers can combine multiple funding streams to make up the individual budget to meet a person’s assessed support needs.

“The idea behind individual budgets is to enable people needing social care and associated services to design that support and to give them the power to decide the nature of the services they need.  Key features are:

(Department of Health)

Funds are combined within one bank account and monitoring done as a whole, “with as light a touch as is possible to enable the most flexible outcomes for the individual.” 

In Control Scotland promotes the development of Self Directed Support and Individualised Budgets in Scotland.  It provides a framework to bring together existing good practice, to introduce new ways of working which will help everyone, and to support everyone involved in meeting the challenges.  For more information see www.in-control.org.uk  Tel 0141 418 5933

Funds which can go into an individual budget include those from local authority social care, Independent Living Fund, Access to Work, Supporting People, Disabled Facilities Grant and Integrated Community Equipment services. Some of these are explained below: 

The Independent Living Fund was set up as a national resource dedicated to the financial support of disabled people to enable them to choose to live in the community rather than in residential care. Awards are in the form of regular four-weekly payments to individuals, which are used to buy personal care in the community. Recipients may use care agencies or employ personal assistants, but may not employ relatives who live in the same house. An ILF award can form part of an individualised budget. For more information, Tel 0845 601 8815 or visit www.ilf.org.uk

A person with a disability who owns the property they live in, or is a tenant, may qualify for a disabled facilities grant towards the cost of providing adaptations and facilities to enable the disabled person to continue to live there. Such grants are given by local councils under Part Xiii of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987.   Contact your local Housing department of your local council for more information, or request a booklet “Housing Grants” from your local authority or see www.scotland.gov.uk