How can Personal Budgets be made up?
Personal budgets can be made up in the following different ways, or a combination of them:
• Notional budget – where a young person, a child and their family understands the amount of funding available to them and decides how the budget is used. No money is exchanged. The Local Authority or CCG still commissions’ services and manages contracts. Children or young people and their families are informed how much money is available and, with support, identify the different ways to spend that money to meet their defined outcomes.
• Real budget managed by a third party organisation – where the child or young person and their family know how much funding is available to them but a third party 6 organisation holds the funding. The third party organisation helps the child/young person and their family decide what they need and then buys the services the child/young person and their family has chosen to achieve their outcomes.
• Direct payments– where the child or young person and their family receives the funding that is available to them as a direct payment for them to manage with or without assistance (managed account).
• A combination of all three