Self-Directed Support

Please tell us what you think about our website, we welcome your feedback.

Customer notice

Due to essential maintenance some of our web services will be unavailable between these times 7pm Friday 25 May and 5pm Sunday 27 May 2012.

In case of any emergencies please see our Facebook or Twitter pages.

Self-Directed Support Fact Sheet
Last updated: September 2010

Introduction

Wiltshire Council is introducing a new way of providing adult social care to the people in Wiltshire. This new way of working is called self-directed support.

Self-directed support puts people at the centre of everything we do through the use of a person-centred approach, because we believe the individual is best placed to know what they need and how those needs can best be met. It helps people to be more in control of their support and to meet their needs in creative and flexible ways.

We hope this guide will help to explain what self-directed support is and help people to get started with planning their support.

Self-directed support covers:

• Assessing your need
• Making your support plan
• Organising your support
• Checking how things are going

What is self directed support?

Self-directed support is for adults (aged 18 and over) who are eligible for care and support services. It is the process by which you have choice and control over the support you need to go about your daily life. It puts you at the centre of decisions about what you want to achieve, how and where you live, and what social care and support services you need to help you do this.

Assessing your need

When you first contact us we will discuss your situation with you to find out what help you need. These early discussions help to identify what your social care needs are and are the first stage of an assessment.

We will always try to meet as many of your needs as possible by giving you advice and information about services that are available to everyone in the local community. You may need information and guidance about equipment or technology that could help to meet your needs. There may be resources in your local community that could help you achieve what you want. We will do our best to make sure you know what is available and how to access it; this advice and support is available to everyone.

If you need ongoing support to meet your social care needs we will discuss your situation with you to find out if we can give you help with this. We are not able to give help to everyone and so we use guidelines to decide who is eligible for help. These guidelines are called ‘Fair Access to Care Services’ and you can ask us for more information.

Even if we cannot give you ongoing help, you can still ask us for help in identifying your needs and planning and arranging your support if you need it.

If you are eligible for ongoing help we will move on to a more detailed assessment. This is when we talk to you in more detail about what is working well in your life and what areas that you need support with. By the end of the assessment we will be able to identify what your needs are and which qualify for help from the council.

We will then be able to give you an indication of how much money could be made available to pay for the support you need. We will also talk with you about your financial situation and we will work out what your contribution to the cost of your support will be.

Making your support plan

When your assessment has taken place, your eligible needs have been identified and you know how much money could be available, you will need to make a support plan.

You can make your support plan yourself, someone else can help you with it, or someone can do it for you.However, you choose to make your support plan; it is important that you are involved as much as possible. Your support plan is about you and what is important to you; it describes the support that you think will help to meet your social care and support needs. It will show how the available money will be used to meet your eligible needs.

When your support plan is finished it will need to be agreed by a social care manager before any money can be released and your care co-ordinator will arrange this.

There are a number of questions that your support plan must answer before it can be agreed and any money released. Once your support plan has been agreed, the money being contributed by Wiltshire Council is called your ‘personal budget’.

Organising your support

You can now use your personal budget to buy the support as agreed in your support plan. You can organise and buy the support yourself, with help from family, friends or an independent organisation if you wish, or you can ask us to arrange the support for you. You can also choose to have a mixture of the two.

Checking how things are going

Once your support is set up, we will contact you to check how things are going; this is called a review. We will do this about six weeks after things get going and if there are any problems with your support arrangements you can either sort them out directly with the people involved, or you can ask us to help.

Once things are settled and working well we will check back with you at least once a year. At this point, if your needs have changed, or you wish to adjust your support plan, we can help you with this. If your needs change or you want to make significant changes to the support you are getting, you can contact us between reviews and let us know.

Last updated: 20 October 2010