Making a support plan

Making a support plan

Once you have been told how much money you can have you need to make a plan indicating how you intend to use the money to pay for your support. The support plan does not need to be complicated. It can be as detailed or as simple as you like as long as it covers all the important elements (see below).

You may find it useful to ask for help from a social worker who knows about brain injury and family members, friends and your local Headway Group or Branch may also help.

Your plan must cover each of the elements explained below, otherwise social services will ask for more information. You can give your support plan to social services in any format, such as in writing, by email, by audio recording, over the telephone or in person. Remember, it is important to keep a record of what you have asked for.

Your plan must cover:

What is most important to you

This can be people, places and routines as well as help you need. For example, it may be that visiting relatives or friends, gardening, getting to a regular social or religious activity or attending a Headway group are important to you.

What your goals are and what you want to achieve

The plan should indicate what changes you want to make, what you want to achieve and what you need to make it happen. These goals can include anything at all as long as they are realistic and achievable.

How you will be supported

Tell social services what kind of support you want, when you will need that help, how you want it provided and by whom. You also need to explain how you would cope with possible problems. For example, if a family member normally takes you shopping, who will do this when they are away?

How you will spend your personal budget

You need to explain how you will use your budget to pay for this support. For example you might choose to use some to pay for a personal assistant to help with personal care and some for a computer.

You will be able to decide which services, adaptations, equipment or support you want that best meets your needs and your goals. You can ask for anything at all as long as you can justify it and explain how it will be used. For example, you may decide that you need:

• services such as those provided by a Headway group
• personal assistants/carers to help with washing and dressing, cleaning, shopping, travelling or participating in leisure activities
• equipment such as communication/mobility aids
• memory aids such as pagers and personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, ipads or laptop computers
• alterations to your home
• money for transport or to reimburse relatives who regularly drive you
• holidays
• anything you think would help meet your needs

How you would like the money to be paid

You also need to explain how you want the money to be paid. You can choose any or all of the following:

• as a direct payment to you - usually paid in monthly instalments or as one-off payments, direct payments are a good option if you want to be responsible for managing and spending the money yourself.
• as an indirect payment - to a relative or other person known to you, a good option if you do not want the responsibility of handling the money yourself.
• as an indirect payment to a trust - where three or more people set up a trust to manage your money for you. For example, three relatives might share the job of managing the money.
• as a care managed package - where social services look after the money for you
• as an individual service fund - where a sum of money is managed by a service provider on behalf of an individual. The money is restricted for use on providing care and support services for that individual which meet the criteria set out in their support plan. It can include services purchased from other providers.
• as a broker managed fund - where you use a brokerage service to manage the money for you (see below for more information on this).

How your support will be managed

You need to explain how your support will be organised day-to-day and how the money will be managed. For example you may organise the care yourself or someone else might arrange this for you. If you are going to employ a personal assistant or carer, social services need to know that you understand your responsibilities as an employer. Social services will inform you who can advise and support you with this.

How you will stay in control of your life

Social services want to make sure that you are making the decisions about your support. Use this section to explain that the decisions are yours. If others help you, explain how they involve you with decisions. Also say when you would like your support reviewed.

What you are going to do to make the plan work

This is an action plan where you set out what will happen and when. For example if you have asked for money for a computer and software, you could say when and where you are going to buy it and how you will learn to use it. Social services need to make sure that you have thought through the practicalities of getting and using the support you ask for.

Getting the plan agreed

If your social worker is happy that your plan will meet your needs and that you can get what you have asked for within your budget, they will agree it and sign it. If they need any more information from you to make their decision, they will contact you.