A network for co-production practitioners

'Pooling' personal budgets

Hi all

I work for a disability charity called Choices and Rights in Hull, East Yorkshire (see choicesandrights.org.uk for more information). I am involved in heading up the pooling budgets project which involves disabiled people sharing their personal budgets/direct payments they have been assessed as needing by our local authority's social services team. By doing so, they look at a range of benefits such as flexibility, promotion of independent living, creation of peer support/networking, reduction of isolation, achieving affordability (in certain circumstances) and acting as a solution to a practical problem. For instance we have responded to a user led group who wanted to share the costs for travelling, setting up/running a social group, a social enterprise, collectively employ personal assistants, bulk buy equipment, share the cost of living together and lots of other brilliant examples of where pooling has worked well.

I wondered whether this project was of interest to you, as it is always helpful to know what is happening on a national front to establish best practice guidance and swap ideas.

Kind regards,

Luke

Luke Cardwell
Choices and Rights Disability Coalition

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kim McGowan on December 11, 2012 at 20:49

Hi Luke

Great discussion to start and I'd certainly be interested to hear more about this from a best practice perspective and also hear from anyone who has had success with this.

I'm currently working with a charity providing supported housing and services for adults with learning disabilities to facilitate therapeutic gardening projects with groups of residents and other local service users referred via the local authority to the charity for day services. By pooling personal budgets, we are developing the provision of weekly group supported activities including materials and lunch. This is much easier to do with a group and with pooled budgets.

These projects will be starting early next spring - if it's of interest at all, I'd be happy to keep in touch and let you know how things progress.

Best wishes,

Kim

Kim McGowan

Founder of Grow Beyond - a new social enterprise creating supported gardening projects to improve mental health and well being.

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Permalink Reply by Luke Cardwell on December 12, 2012 at 12:09

Hi Kim

Thanks for your reply. If you could contact me via Luke@choicesandrights.org.uk we can discuss your project further.

Kind regards,

Luke

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Permalink Reply by Lucie Stephens on December 14, 2012 at 18:00

Hi Luke,

This work sounds really interesting. I've just completed some work for HACT (the housing charity) to review work they supported in six areas where people were exploring pooling personal budgets. There were a range of practical ideas that arose, from setting up a county wide website to enable people to find others with similar interests in order to buy stuff together, through to working with commissioners to buy sleep-in overnight support. The report is due to be published in the new year and I will blog about it here. While doing this work there seems to have been a growing interest in the pooling approach. Is it OK if I point people in your direction when they ask me for other examples?

Harry Cheesman is currently conducting some research in this area for Which. You might want to contact him directly (Harry.Cheesman@which.co.uk) to share your work.

Cheers,

Lucie

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Permalink Reply by Luke Cardwell on December 14, 2012 at 19:50

Hi Lucie

Brilliant, if you can send me a copy of the HACT report you make reference to once it is drafted and published to Luke@choicesandrights.org.uk

Of course, please do signpost others interested in exploring the concept or involved with setting up similar projects onwards. It is always useful to establish best practice guidance.

Harry has already contacted me separately about the research he is conducting around personal budgets, but thanks all the same.