Personal Budgets fill the cracks
There’s a little-understood aspect to special educational needs provision known as Personal Budgets. I say little understood, because in 2019 in Kent there were fewer than 20 children or young people with a personal budget, despite 11,763 EHC Plans in the county.
A while ago I wrote about children who fall through the cracks. I suggested at the time they require creative solutions. Could this be what the personal budget is intended to deliver?
I have a friend who can’t find trousers to fit. They are always too long. They have been faced for many years with the pain of having to do their own alterations which have never really worked or the expense of custom-tailoring. They have a dream of finding a shop that will alter their trouser hems while they complete their shopping elsewhere, for a nominal charge.
I see a personal budget as being similar. It is the nominally charged alteration service that makes an education setting that can’t provide all the required special educational provisions, into an acceptable option.
In theory, it should prevent the need for specialist provision simply to access special educational provision that may not otherwise be available in a mainstream setting.
For example, my son is in a mainstream school. However, he has occupational therapy (OT) and counselling in his EHCP. The mainstream school was not willing to buy in these services, so they are provided via a personal budget.
So what is a personal budget?
A personal budget is designed to support provision in an EHCP. It can include elements of education, health or social care. Section 9.61 of the SEN Code of Practice (CoP) states:
Where a young person or parent is seeking an innovative or alternative way to receive their support services – particularly through a Personal Budget, but not exclusively so – then the planning process should include the consideration of those solutions with support and advice available to assist the parent or young person in deciding how best to receive their support.
— SEN CODE OF PRACTICE 2015
Interestingly, Section 1.21 of the CoP makes it clear that:
parents of children who have an EHC plan and young people who have such a plan have a right to ask for … a Personal Budget for their support.
Whilst 9.97 explains that
Local authorities have a duty to prepare a Personal Budget when requested.
And 9.106 goes further to state that a local authority
must prepare a personal budget unless the sum is part of a larger amount and disaggregation of the funds for the Personal Budget:
* would have an adverse impact on services provided or arranged by the local authority for other EHC plan holders, or
* where it should not be an efficient use of the local authority’s resources
An example of disaggregation might be where a school already provides occupational therapy (OT) within its fees, and a parent wishes to procure their own occupational therapist. To achieve this a deduction of the OT element from the school fees would be made. However, this may render the OT provided by the school for other children no longer viable.
The test of whether it is not an efficient use of the local authorities resources is one which has been tested on numerous occasions in SEND Tribunals, and I refer to it in this previous post.
