Personal Budgets in Social Care inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“Commissioning adult social care services through personal budgets and direct payments is an important way of giving care users more choice and control over their services. When implemented well they may improve users' quality of life. National Audit Office report As such, the National Audit Office (NAO) has undertaken to report on the Department of Health's work in the area, to understand the effectiveness and value for money in terms of outcomes for users. Local authorities spent £6.3 billion on long-term community care in 2014–15. Around 500,000 adults in England received personal budgets in 2014–15, varying between 10% and 100% of users across authorities. The Care Act made personal budgets mandatory for all eligible users from April 2015. Much of the positive evidence for personalising commissioning, however, is old or relates to subgroups of users. In preparing the report, the NAO considered that there was a strong case for better use of existing surveys and evidence gathering, so the Department and its national partners can understand the relationship between the different ways to commission personalised services for users, and improvements in user outcomes. Furthermore, the Department is extending personal budgets in healthcare and has an ambition that between 50,000 and 100,000 people will have a personal health budget by 2020.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
When implemented well, personal budgets allow adults to try new ways to meet their social care needs, give them more choice and control over the care they receive and give them the opportunity to achieve the outcomes they want from their care. The Department of Health has demonstrated the potential of personal budgets to transform care and improve quality of life for most groups of social care service users but it is not doing enough to ensure that all can reap the benefits and it has not set out how it will judge success. We are not assured that local authorities can fully personalise care while seeking to save money and are concerned that users’ outcomes will be adversely affected. Local authorities face a substantial challenge supporting sustainable local care markets which offer the diverse range of provision needed for users to personalise their care, while care providers are struggling to recruit and retain appropriately qualified staff as financial pressures increase.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 23 March 2016 to its close on 4 January 2018.
- Oral evidence 13 Apr 2016
- Report 8 Jun 2016
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 2nd Report - Personal budgets in social care ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 13 Apr 2016No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗