Midland Heart personalises care budgets

Midland Heart has embraced the government’s concept of personalised budgets for people receiving care and support services, having spent the last two years trialling its approach to the scheme.

The move to personalised budgets will see local authorities being required to offer each individual under its care maximum control over how their own funding allocation is spent, rather than having their support service determined for them under a blanket policy.

This is said to represent an unprecedented transfer of power from organisations to service users, with the Government’s aim being to provide greater independence to individuals and their carers along with increased flexibility and choice, enabling people to control how their care is provided and in what form.

Midland Heart has been developing its approach to personalised services for the past two years, with trial programmes being undertaken across three of its customer groups; individuals living with mental health, learning disabilities and older people.

Neil Tryner, head of business development at Midland Heart, commented: “This is a huge move by the Government which will see a dramatic shift in the traditional worker-client relationship.

“Whilst we are committed to revolutionising the way we operate in line with these new objectives, the move poses an enormous challenge in ensuring that, while embracing the changes wholeheartedly, we continue to protect both our customers and staff.

“Organisational preparation and planning is vital if we are to successfully be a part of this large-scale transformation, which will result in improved quality of care throughout the whole social care sector.

“We now have to step out of our comfort zone which currently sees us delivering a very traditional model of care and look at taking this huge leap forward, which will ultimately give individuals greater control over their lives.”

The organisation says it has worked closely with customers to identify the services and activities that best meet their support needs and those which individuals would choose to spend their allocation on given the option, notably those which are not provided within their existing service.

As part of the process, Midland Heart has worked with a number of outside agencies, including creative arts based ‘Box of Frogs’, to implement a programme to give individuals greater autonomy by ensuring that they are a key part of the decision making process. It has also worked alongside Homeless Link to explore the application of the personalised approach with homeless people within the areas it works.

In addition, Midland Heart has dedicated itself to carrying out a comprehensive review of its staff code of conduct and the implementation of a new cross-customer group performance and quality framework to ensure that services are of the highest possible standard across all areas of the business.