New ADKC leaflet - Getting more care/ support for your money.

Getting more care/ support for your money.

Whether you get a Personal Budget from the Council to pay for care, or you use your own money to pay for assistance and support, you will want to make sure that your money goes as far as possible!

Here are some hints and tips:

1. Give some serious thought about the best way to meet your needs. There may be a different way to meet your needs that you hadn’t even considered – for example by buying a piece of equipment instead of care.

For example - a lady needed help with preparing food and cleaning up after a meal. Traditionally she would have paid an agency worker to come in to help her. Instead, she decided to use her Personal Budget to buy a food processor, to help her cut the vegetables, and a dishwasher, to enable her to do the washing up. This made her feel more independent and meant that she didn’t need to work her life around having someone to come in to help. In the long run, buying equipment saves money too as, once bought, the equipment would last for many years.

2. Research the market – there are many agencies providing care services in the borough. They all have different rates and different deals – don’t just settle with the first offer, ring round and see if there is an agency that can provide the same service for cheaper. You can find which agencies are available, and read what the inspectors think, by going to the search function on the

Care Quality Commission website:  http://www.cqc.org.uk/#careinyourhome

3. Choose the right provider – often cleaning companies charge less than care agencies – so if you just need help with housework you might be better off just contacting cleaning companies.

4. Negotiate – if you are able to be flexible with when you have your care you might be able to get a deal with an agency. For example, if you need 3 hours of care, they might be able to do you a better deal if you have all three hours together instead of having three one-hour sessions. Alternatively, you might say that you are happy to fit your care around whenever they have someone in the area – this would save the agency travel costs, so they might pass the savings to you. It is always worth asking what deals they can give you!

5. Club together with others and share the cost– if you need help socialising you might want to get together with other like-minded individuals and share the cost of the support. For example, there are two disabled people who like going to the cinema– usually each person has their own support worker and goes to the cinema alone. To reduce costs these people could decide to go to the cinema together and take one support work to assist both people, they could then split the cost of the one support worker between them!

6. Consider employing privately – if you are currently using an agency, you might be able to save money by employing a Personal Assistant (private care worker) instead. Usually Personal Assistants get paid less than you would pay for agency fees (as you don’t have to pay for the agency’s profits) but there are responsibilities that go along with being an employer. If you want to discuss this more feel free to contact the Personal Budget Team.

7. Make use of free support / resources – many organisations offer volunteer support, or support at a greatly reduced fee – find out what is available before spending your money!

For more information about Personal Budgets and Social Care spending please contact the ADKC Personal Budget team on 020 8960 8888 or by email to:

Jenny H:       pbsupport@adkc.org.uk 

Martha:         pbadmin@adkc.org.uk