Page 8 - TLAP Beyond Direct Payments

Beyond Direct Payments
As Sian Lockwood notes (Lockwood, 2014):
“Councils often inadvertently place barriers in the way of people with managed budgets exercising real choice – and in the process severely limit local market diversity. For example councils may say that people with managed budgets can only buy services from providers on an approved list or framework contract.”
This paper sets out to show that there are some other, often better, options between these two extremes:
• funding a local person, family or small business (a “micro-enterprise”) to develop a good support solution with the person
• being able to have a exible budget which is managed for you by a local support organisation or person
• organising systems that reduce the work and complexity of personal budgets.
We hope that this paper inspires more courage from managers working within health and social care. Signi cant change, that can help hundreds of thousands of people have better lives, is within our grasp, but the system needs to change to open up these possibilities to more people. We need to go beyond direct payments.
Dr Simon Duffy and Angela Catley
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