Personal Budgets and Fairer Contributions
ADULT SOCIAL CARE CONSULTATION: 1ST JULY 2011 TO 30TH SEPTEMBER 2011
Fairer Contributions Consultation Feedback
Earlier this year there was an extensive consultation exercise on the proposed changes to the Fairer Charging Policy.
We circulated questionnaires and further information to everyone who might be affected by the proposed changes. We also gathered views through a survey on the Council Website, seven open meetings and through two events held by Blackpool Advocacy and Blackpool LINk.
In all we received 150 responses to our questionnaires and 36 people attended the drop-in sessions to express their views.
The changes to the way we will charge for services in the future reflect the feedback we received from the consultation.
What has changed as a result of the Consultation?
Two of the proposals:
- to remove the limit to the amount people might be asked to pay for their care
- to remove the Council’s subsidies from services such as Vitaline and Day Care were rejected by nearly half of the people who responded to the consultation and will not be introduced. However, there was support for the introduction of charges for some mental health services as long as people were assessed as able to pay.
The others:
- the cost of the agreed personal budget will be compared to the person’s net disposable income
- the charge will never exceed the cost of the annual personal budget are being introduced through the new Fairer Contributions Policy.
Further work will be done to understand the implications of personal budgets in relation to the Shared Lives service.
In addition, Councillors agreed that further information should be circulated about Personal Budgets and that we would re-instate a Readers Group to check that any information on social care that is to be circulated to service users and carers is easy to understand.
A full copy of the consultation report can be found here
A copy of the Fairer Contributions Policy (version 1.1 amended 29.02.12) can be found here
To view the Equality Analysis for the Fairer Contributions Policy click here |