Self-direct your care – living a full and glorious life
Care and Support Plans
Care and support plans are designed to enable individuals to self-direct their care and live full lives, usually using direct payments. Whether you receive care, or are a carer, the idea is to provide you with the direction, choice and control to do the things that matter most to you.
This not only includes washing and dressing, but also connecting with the wider community. For carers, they offer support for leaves of absence, support groups, and training. Through the implementation of direct payments, the plan enables people to live glorious, ordinary lives.
Personalising Direct Payments
Having spoken to your local authority and completed a needs assessment, you may be eligible for direct payments. Direct payments provide you with the opportunity to personalise your care and support.
A common use for direct payments is to employ your own personal assistants (PA). You might do this yourself or use a “middle man” who will manage the money on your behalf if you prefer.
Alternatively, as depicted in this video, there are other ways that this money can be used. This group, Friends United Together, created a co-operative to pool their resources and have more control over the care and support they receive.
Self-direct Your Payments
IMPACT has found that direct payments are great at increasing choice and control, for example they can be used to fund a personal assistant.
In this video, Richie offers an example for how direct payments helped him to find personal assistants that could provide the support he required.
Employing your own personal assistants
To get the personalised support you need, many people hire personal assistants. These may be friends and family members, or professional carers/assistants. Finding and hiring the right person can seem like a daunting task. However, there are many different approaches to it.
Some people use ‘values-based recruitment’ to help them hire the right people. This involves hiring people with values that align with yours, rather than focusing purely on skills, qualifications or prior experience.
How to Apply Values-Based Recruitment
During our Network on values-based recruitment, the organisations involved created this template to support themselves implement this recruitment style.
