Oldham Online Support Plan

What is a support plan?

A support plan is a plan that shows how you are going to use money (i.e. the Indicative Amount) and other resources to help you keep healthy safe and well within the law.

A support plan is a plan that shows how you are going to take control of the support you need to live life in the way that you wish to, as far as possible.

A support plan shows the things you want to do or achieve that will make your life better, and how you will use the available money and resources to do this

What does a support plan look like?

It can take any form you want – it can be in writing on paper, it can be a computer presentation or a DVD video where you show how you will use money and resources to keep you healthy, safe and well without breaking the law.

A support plan will show how you will get the help you need to manage your life in the community. This can include the support from your family and friends, community organisations, faith organisations, workplace, as well as formal paid sources of support.

What things must be included in my support plan

You must tell us about yourself and why you need support to help you live your life in the community.

You must tell us how you or your trustees will make sure that the support you need is managed in a responsible way.

If you choose to directly employ people, you must show how you will be a good employer and be fair and reasonable in the things you ask them to do on your behalf, within the limits of employment and health and safety laws.

You must tell us how you will use your money to get the help you need and how you will keep records of the money used so that it can be checked out.

You must provide a breakdown of how the money will be used.

What can I do with the money?

More or less anything that is legal and can be shown to help you meet your needs. It is public money intended to meet your personal and social care needs. You have the responsibility for how you use it. You can use some of the money and save some of it for particular things that you want to do or need to purchase to meet your needs. The money is allocated as an annual amount paid in four weekly instalments and you do not have to spend the full weekly allocation every week.

What am I not allowed to do with the money?

The money is not intended for use as a form of personal income to pay household bills, to pay people in your immediate family who live in the same home unless the circumstances are considered by the panel to be exceptional, given away, or used speculatively for gain.

Some important things to consider:

A support plan is your plan and owned by you. It is not a plan produced by the Local Authority on your behalf. You can do this yourself, do it with friends or family, or employ an agency or support broker to help you develop your plan.

A local authority Care Manager can assist you in finding out information or making contacts, and drawing up the support plan. However, the Support Plan belongs to you the customer and not the Local Authority. In this sense it is very different from a Care Plan that is written as a result of a Community Care Assessment where the Local Authority has the responsibility for commissioning and arranging the provision of support and services to meet your needs.

When you have written your Support Plan, the Local Authority will check and approve it prior to releasing any money. This is to ensure that it meets its duty of care to you when providing the money to meet the support needs you have identified in your plan. We will keep a copy of your Support Plan as this will be used in any review of your circumstances by the Local Authority.

You are responsible for your plan and any contractual arrangements made as a result of the plan.

Complete the support plan below. The completed form will be Emailed directly to the Individual Budget Team.

Name of Care Manager

Your Email address

Date

All about me

This part should tell us your name, your age, who you live with, and your view of your personality. It should tell us the nature of the difficulties or disability you have and how this affects your ability to live your life in the way you would wish.

What is important to me

This part should tell us about the people, relationships, places, events, interests – anything that is important in your life. This is about the things that matter and give your life quality, a sense of worth and meaning.

What I would change to make my life better

This is about the things that may be barriers to living your life fully where if changes were made you would have greater control or independence in your living situation, home, work or leisure. It can also be about those things that need to be maintained or arranged to keep you healthy, safe and well.

What I want to do

This is about the things you want to do in your life, to achieve or experience taking into account how you might deal with some of the difficulties you may face.

How I am going to get the help I need

This part will tell us about the support you have now, what works well for you and what support you are planning for the future year using the money allocated. This could include equipment, technology, personal support from family or friends at no cost, paid support from people you employ directly or from an agency, or more traditional services that you choose to purchase from the independent or council sectors. You need to show how the support arrangements will work to keep you healthy safe and well and be within the law. Proposals to use family members of the same household as employed personal assistants is only agreed in exceptional circumstances where alternative options are demonstrated to be unable to meet identified support requirements.

How my Individual Budget will be spent

This section needs to show how you will spend the amount suggested by the Local Authority and any other money/ funding that you can use. This must be legal and take into account any employment responsibilities. It should also include employers liability insurance and brokerage costs where required.

Total

How I will manage my support

This will show how your support arrangements will be managed in a way that keeps yourself and the people who support you healthy safe and well within the law. If you directly employ people you need to show that you know or have engaged appropriate guidance and support to be a good employer. This should show how you will ensure that any legal obligations as an employer are met. Equally, in relation to people who are offering support to you on a voluntary basis, you need to show how you will ensure they are not put at undue risk of harm as a result of the way support is provided to you.

How I will stay in control and achieve what I have said I will do over the next year - my outcomes.

This will show how you will maintain your support plan and ensure that it continues to reflect your needs and wishes over time – and not be taken over by other people or the services you engage to help you. The outcomes need to be very clear and show how using this money creatively and flexibly to meet your need will help you to do the things you want to do. This money is to help you have a good life

At your annual review we will look at your support plan with you, ask you if you have done the things you said you would, this is the same as have you met your outcomes, if not look at why and what needs to change. Below is an example of how you might record your outcomes.

Use of money

Potential outcomes

Achieved outcomes

Good employment issues considered by this support plan include:

• How I will manage my support

• Employment Liability Insurance

• How I will find the right personal assistants

• How I will pay wages, tax, national insurance and if I need help who will help me to do this

• How I will design contracts, job descriptions, who will help me.

• How I have thought about areas of risk, health and safety issues