What is a care and support plan?
Overview
A care and support plan (sometimes called a care plan) shows how you want to get the support you need.
It’ll say how you would like to use your personal budget to meet your eligible needs and achieve your outcomes. It can also include what your family and friends do for you.
About the plan
You can choose to do your care and support plan yourself or get help from us, your family, friends or a broker.
We can provide you with more information about your different options and help you choose what will work best for you.
What goes in a plan?
Your care and support plan should talk about you and how the support will meet your needs and outcomes. It should also show how you'd like to arrange your support so you stay safe and well.
If you're using your own money, we won’t need to agree the plan. However, if you are entitled to funding from us we must check and agree the amount of support and the cost.
To be agreed, your support plan must:
- be legal
- be sustainable (so that it continues to provide ongoing support)
- meet your needs in the most cost effective way
- include information and advice on what can be done to reduce, prevent or delay the development of needs in the future
You support plan cannot put you or anyone else at risk and cannot be used to fund services which can be provided by another source (such as the NHS).
If you will be having a direct payment, it must show what needs the direct payment is being used for, as well as the amount and frequency of the payments.
If you're not happy with your plan
If you're not happy with your plan, or the decisions the council has made about it, then you can discuss this with your care manager and ask for it to be reviewed.
If you're still unhappy, you can make a complaint about the decision to our Compliments and Complaints Team:
Compliments and Complaints Team
Buckinghamshire Council
Walton Street Offices
Walton Street
Aylesbury
HP20 1UA
Call: 01296 387844
Email: [email protected]
Support from our brokerage service
Brokers support people who take their personal budget as a direct payment to organise and find services and activities to meet their needs. This service is free to those with an eligible need for social care.
Reviewing the plan
Your care and support plan should be reviewed soon after it has started, and then at least annually.
The review checks:
- whether your support plan is still working and meeting your goals
- that your needs haven't changed
- that any risk assessments are up to date
If, after the review, it is clear that things have changed that affect the detail within the care plan, we will work with you to rewrite the plan. This may also involve a new needs assessment and financial assessment.
If it's decided that you are no longer eligible for local authority support, you will receive written reasons for this, with information about other help available, including funding your own care.