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Personal Health Budgets

What is a Personal Health Budget?

A personal health budget or a ‘PHB’ is an amount of money used to support your health and well being needs, as agreed between you and your healthcare team.

The aim of a personal health budget is to give you more choice and control over the money spent on meeting your health and well being needs.

Your health and well being needs will be set out in a personalised care and support plan, which you and your healthcare team will develop together. PHB’s support the vision of a more personalised, patient-focused NHS.

For additional information around PHB’s in Hampshire please see our new ‘Personal Health Budgets: Your Questions Answered’ booklet.

For further detail around PHB’s please see the WHCCG Personal Health Budget Policy

You and your health or social care professional can decide together how best to manage your personal health budget. It can be managed in three different ways or a combination of these:

  1. A Direct Payment – You receive the money to buy and manage your own healthcare and support. Your health or social care team must agree that this meets your needs. You have to show what you have spent it on, but you, or your representative, buy and manage services yourself.
  2. A Notional Budget – No money changes hands. You find out how much money is available and together with your health or social care team, you decide how to spend that money. Your agreed care and support will then be arranged
  3. A Third Party Managed Budget – After you have agreed your budget with your health or social care team an independent organisation (for example an independent user trust or voluntary organisation) holds the money for you and helps you organise and pay for your care and support.

If you are eligible for a personal health budget, the following steps must be followed before your budget can be made available to you: 

  1. Assessment of your health and well being needs and collection of information relating to the health and care services currently used to support you.
  2. An indicative budget will be prepared.  This is a calculation needed to confirm the amount of money in your personal budget.
  3. Your personalised care and support plan will need to be developed.  This means identifying support and services required to keep you healthy and well and meet your agreed outcomes. 
  4. Your health or social care team will help you to decide how your personal health budget will be managed. 
  5. Care and support will be put in place; either by you if you are managing the personal health budget yourself, or by someone else if you choose a notional or 3rd party budget.

The NHS Continuing Healthcare team in Hampshire have developed a contract with The Enham Trust.

Enham are available to provide additional support for those with a PHB for example:

  • Information to those considering a PHB or Direct Payment
  • Full support to set up a direct payment including advice regarding employment, insurance, payroll etc
  • Recruitment of PA’s/carers
  • Managed accounts
  • Support for existing Direct Payment holders in resolving employment and budget issues
  • Disclosure and barring service checks (DBS)

For more details please see The Enham Trust Information Leaflet

If you are already in receipt of a PHB in Hampshire, please contact your Specialist Practitioner who will arrange a referral to Enham.

Independent Lives are also running a series of Employment Workshops to support PHB clients in becoming first time employers.

Support During COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic the NHS CHC team have also been providing additional support in making contact with all PHB holders to ensure they are safe and well and coping under the unprecedented circumstances. Please see the NHS CHC: COVID-19 homepage for additional information around the COVID-19 pandemic such as details around accessing PPE and FAQ’s.

The Hampshire PA Finder website provides a wealth of information around finding and employing a Personal Assistant in care in Hampshire, as well as assisting in the recruitment process and supporting individuals with becoming a first time employer.

For more details please see the Hampshire Personal Assistants in Care information leaflet or the New easy read ‘Employing personal assistants toolkit’ booklet.