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Increasing the take up of direct payments

  • Last modified date:
    13 November 2007

Direct payments are a success for those who have them. Unfortunately many people are simply not being offered them when they should be. There are wide variations in uptake, both between council schemes and across the different groups of individuals.

Supporting local councils to improve the take up of direct payments

Access to direct payments should be available to all people eligible to receive them. There is evidence that the take up of direct payments is also sometimes hindered by a lack of adequate support or information, or unnecessarily complicated processes.

Therefore the Department of Health has developed the direct payments uptake project to support local councils and their partners. The aim of the project is improve access to, and uptake of direct payments. The Department has:

  • held regional events to identify issues which limit local uptake and highlight any solutions that might benefit other authorities.  A self-assessment and action planning guide was published in December 2006 to support local authorities and their partners in this undertaking

  • disseminated the guide through a series of regional events. These events promoted the use of the guide, facilitated exchange of expertise and sharing of local solutions

  • collated local solutions to form a web-based national "solution set". This was launched at the national direct payments conference on 21 May 2007. The solution set is a way of sharing "what works" from those with experience and building on this to promote and provide direct payments. This is intended as a starting point for increasing the sharing of solutions.

Commitment to delivering personalisation and control for service users

The Department of Health is committed to driving the personalisation and control agenda forward with its partners and work on increasing the take-up of direct payments plays a fundamental role. Direct payments are the future for social care along with the individual budget pilots and the In Control work.

The Department is determined to strengthen this approach, bringing together learning from the three programmes to tackle obstacles, share best practice and build momentum and enthusiasm for the vision.

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