Paying a physical activity or sports provider for sessions using direct payments
One of the big changes in both health and social care has been a focus on ‘personalisation’ which puts you at the centre of the process of identifying your needs and making choices about how you are supported. It increases your opportunity to choose social care and health support that works best for you.
Often this happens through a personal budget and direct payments – so you can decide on and buy the most appropriate support for you to meet your outcomes.
Personal Budgets
A personal budget for social care sets out the amount of money allocated to cover the costs of your social care and support needs. This amount is based on a support plan agreed between you and your local authority. We believe that you should be able to use your personal budget in whatever way you wish if you can demonstrate it meets your outcomes.
Physical activity is a very important part of many people’s lives and meets a number of outcomes including increased fitness, increased confidence, and connections with the community and more importantly having fun and being happy.
Personal health budgets
Personal health budgets are an amount of money to support your identified health and wellbeing needs, planned and agreed upon between you and your local NHS team. The aim is to give people with long-term conditions and disabilities greater choice and control over the healthcare and support they receive.
Personal health budgets are based on the same concept as personal budgets, it’s about you having a say in how your outcomes are met. Developments in personal health budgets are relatively new in comparison to personal budgets so approaches across NHS teams and CCGs can vary.
They can be an excellent way to meet your physical and mental health outcomes including being active.
Some examples of using your personal budget for physical activity can be;
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Asking your Personal Assistant to support you to travel to and/or throughout physical activity or sports sessions
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Paying for adapted equipment to help you to get active
Make sure that physical activity and sport is written into your support plan if it meets your outcomes. Even if the funds from the personal budget cannot cover the session, it may help you to pay for some of the costs.
Further resources
For more information about personal budgets processes or to find out about the Care Act look at these Disability Rights UK factsheets.
