South West Regional Network Meeting

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South West Regional Network Meeting

• NIACE/LSC/CSIP Programme
• Mental Health

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Direct Payments Project

• South West Pilots

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Why Direct Payments for people with mental health
difficulties?

• The purpose of direct payments is to give
  recipients control over their own life by
  providing an alternative to social care services
  provided by local councils. A financial payment
  gives the person flexibility to look beyond off
  the peg service solutions for certain housing,
  education, employment and leisure activities as
  well as for personal assistance to meet their
  assessed needs. DH 2003, DP Community Care
  Guidance

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What are Direct Payments?

• Money given in place of services or support
  people would otherwise be using, such as day
  services, support worker, respite break, or other
  community activity/support to manage everyday
  living.
• They should be available to many people who use
  mental health services as a standard option in
  their Care Programme Approach reviews
• There are some exclusions (medical services,
  Mental Health Act)

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Direct payments are made in place of social care
services a person would otherwise receive

• To give people more control over their lives and
  the support they need
• To let people do things that services do not
  provide
• To help people to do more in their local
  community if they wish to

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How people have used direct payments

• Using direct payments to be able to choose what
  support they can get when they really need it,
  and to be able to avoid going into hospital
  wherever possible
• Using direct payments to buy better services than
  those already supplied, including taking into
  account cultural and religious needs
• I use my five hours a week for shopping, lunch
  out, walks in the countryside, sometimes I save
  it up for weekend trips, and I do college courses
  such as The Expert Patient.

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Direct payments will let people chose how they
spend their money for example

• Buying a mobile phone
• Driving lessons
• Joining a violin group
• Joining a fishing club
• Renting a workshop (two people together)
• Hiring an art teacher (four people together)
• Employing someone to manage a small enterprise
  (six people together)
• Travelling to stay with relative for a break

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Uptake of DP in the South West

• While indicating a steady overall increase on
  previous years, official figures for March 2006
• show that almost a quarter of all local
  authorities in England were not making
• any direct payments in lieu of mental health
  services, and a further half were making
• between one and five.

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About the Is it for me? project

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Is it for me?

• 4 project sites were recruited
• Swindon and Wiltshire, service user organisation
• Dorset County Council, DP service
• Poole Prodisability voluntary organisation
• Devon, Social Firm, PLUSS, LA owned limited
  company

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Is it for me?

• All sites have run introductory sessions (January
  2008)
• All sites were involved in recruiting people for
  the 10 hour sessions.
• Two sites have now run the I give it a go
  sessions
• One site has still to do this
• One site had to withdraw due to lack of interest

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Some headline findings

• Barrier to take up of DPs for people with mental
  health difficulties were connected with lack of
  staff/other support
• Development of accredited training programme for
  users of mental health services about Direct
  Payments very helpful, though not always need for
  basic skills training.
• The training to act as a first step towards
  getting involved in progressing skills and
  learning but time scales needs to be long-term

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Some headline findings

• Spin offs from running the project
• Some sites will develop training for staff on DP
  based on curriculum.
• One site considers using the training as
  induction training for MH advocacy services
• One site feels, course would also be suitable for
  people with learning disabilities

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What next?

• The projects will finish their evaluation by end
  of February.
• NIACE to conduct focus groups with
  learners/participants.
• Curriculum for I give it a go is being
  discussed with NCFE regarding accreditation.
• Pilot sites to report back in 6 months time
  regarding any increased uptake of DPs.

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Improving services for people with mental health
problems

• Four broad aims
• To build capacity of the Further Education System
• To boost demand for learning
• To ensure quality of provision
• To raise achievement levels of learners with
  mental health difficulties

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Checklist

• One of a series of resources to help
  organisations to provide quality learning
  opportunities.
• Inspired by the Disability Discrimination Act and
  anticipatory duty (DED)
• Gives a range of guidelines and prompts for good
  practice
• Makes reference to Common Inspection Framework

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Checklist

• Aimed at managers and tutors with
  responsibilities for learners with MH
  difficulties
• Each section has introduction about how it
  relates to learners with MH difficulties
• Not all the sections are relevant for all
  providers but intended to prompt thinking
• Includes action plan at the end to monitor
  progress.

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Some Examples