If you are eligible for a personal budget, then you need a support plan. The support plan details how your personal budget is used to support you. Hull Adult Social Care will work with you to develop your support plan.
You are in charge of making the decisions about your care, with support from Hull Adult Social Care. They listen to you and provide information that you need to help you make informed choices about your care.
Your support plan is an important document which sets out Hull City Council’s responsibilities. It also lets you know how they will act and what they will do in order to support you.
It is important that you are in agreement with your support plan. You and the person who cares for you are involved when the support plan is drawn up.
What is outcome focused support planning?
Outcome focused support planning is a different way of looking at social care. For a long time, adult social care looked at your needs and how to meet them, but outcome focused support planning starts by looking at what you want to achieve. That might be a general outcome such as being safe or a specific one such as being able to see friends or being able to prepare your own meal.
We then ask you to think about what’s stopping you from achieving that outcome and what would help. We will support you to develop a plan which sets out clearly what you want to achieve and what support you would like in order to achieve it. You will get a copy of it and anyone providing support to you will get a copy so that everyone knows what you want.
As well as working to achieve the outcomes which are important to you, the Department of Health set out seven key outcomes that should shape all of our work.
They say that everything we do should -
Improve your health and wellbeing
Help you make a positive contribution
Promote your economic wellbeing
Help you live a life free from discrimination
Help you improve your quality of life
Make sure you have as much choice and control as possible
Uphold your personal dignity.
Moira is 72 and has severe arthritis which was seriously affecting her ability to look after herself and she had mild dementia which meant she was becoming forgetful. She was receiving meals on wheels and a home care call twice a day to help her wash and take her tablets.
The outcomes which Moira wanted to achieve were being able to keep clean on her own, do her own shopping and prepare her own meals, to eat what she wanted, when she wanted to and to take her medication regularly. Her support worker helped her get adaptations to her house to provide a stair lift and a level access shower. She used some of the money available to support her to buy a tablet PC and signed up to a delivery saver service with a local supermarket which meant she could choose her shopping on line and have it delivered as many times a week as she wanted for one monthly fee.
She also started going to a local community group who were running a course called ‘Computers for the terrified!’ She chose food which was easy to prepare and had some ready meals in the freezer to eat when she was having a bad day.
She got an electronic medication dispenser which alerted her when her medication was due and a lifeline telephone and pendant so that she could call for help if she needed it. Moira felt she had got her independence back and because she met new friends at her computer group, started going out more. Her needs hadn’t changed but by changing the way they were met improved her sense of wellbeing and her quality of life enormously.
What to do if your needs change
Hull Adult Social Care will arrange a meeting to make sure that your support plan continues to meet your needs.
The first review usually takes place a few weeks after you start receiving support. The review meeting gives Hull Adult Social Care the opportunity to check your support is working as planned. Further reviews around your care and support are arranged. These usually take place once a year but can be more frequent if they are needed.
If your condition or circumstances changes we may reassess your needs and the amount of help you require.
What is self directed support?
Self directed support means that you take the lead in identifying what support you want to meet the outcomes you want to achieve. These outcomes could be general ones such as being safe or specific ones such as being able to see friends or being able to prepare your own meal. Your choice and control and your independence are at the heart of self directed support.
The services provided or arranged by Hull City Council have been designed to support your choice and independence.
They are -
Advice, information and early support to help prevent or delay needs from arising and to reduce the ones which have
A range of reablement services which will help you get back any independence you have lost following an illness or crisis
Long term support to help you stay as independent as possible for as long as possible
When we arrange services for you from other organisations or agencies, we ask them to set out how they will maximize your choice and control and we work in partnership with the NHS and other providers to make sure services are joined up and built around you.
The process of getting social care support has been designed to put you firmly in control. You can carry out your own assessment, either on your own or with support. You can choose what support you prefer, and who will deliver it. You will know how much money is available to pay for your support and if you wish, you can take it as a direct cash payment. This offer is there for everyone, whether you need support because of an illness or impairment or are a carer.
If you are not able to direct your own support because of a lack of mental capacity, we will work with ‘a suitable person’ on your behalf. The term suitable person is a legal one, set out in the mental capacity act and means someone who knows what you would be saying if you could and will act in your best interest to achieve the outcomes you want.
Lynne’s mother had a dementia which had gradually got worse until her family were no longer able to care for her alone and needed some extra support. Initially, Lynne’s mother waited for several weeks for a full assessment to be completed and the family were then informed about which services would best meet her mother’s needs.
A year later, Lynne’s mothers’ needs had changed and she needed to be assessed again. This time, Lynne and her mother carried out a self assessment of both her mother’s needs and also of Lynne’s needs as a carer. Based on this assessment, a social worker was able to tell Lynne how much money her mother was entitled to in order to pay for support and how much Lynne was entitled to. Lynne didn’t want a direct payment, but was able to tell the social worker that the outcome she wanted was to be able to know when her mother needed support without having to sleep at her mother’s house every night, as she wanted to be with her husband and children.
Lynne knew the areas of her life that her mother wanted support with from paid carers and which she wanted her family to meet, because they had talked about it when Lynne’s mother was still quite able to say exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it. The social worker organised just what Lynne asked her to and put in telecare sensors to alert Lynne if her mother got up in the night and didn’t go back to bed after a certain time.
As Lynne said
‘Self directed support is so much better than the old way. Why should I wait for weeks for a social worker to tell me exactly what I knew in the first place’ and why should she tell me the best way to support my mother. I already knew the best way to support her, because she’d told me so many times. Now we get exactly what we want in just the way we want it and the family feels supported rather than taken over.’
If you disagree with your support plan
If you do not agree with your support plan, you should discuss this first with the person who assessed your needs. If you are still not happy, you can ask for a reassessment. You can do this by letter, telephone or in person.
Hull Adult Social Care always make decisions that are fair based on their guidelines on who qualifies for support.
You can contact Hull City Council - Adult Social Care by -
