Personal health budgets are another way of taking into account what matters to people and their individual strengths and needs in order to provide the best possible care for that individual. They give disabled people and people with long term conditions more choice, control and flexibility over their healthcare.

A personal health budget is a sum of money used to support someone’s health and wellbeing needs, which is planned and agreed upon between the individual or their representative, and the local clinical commissioning group (CCG). It’s a different way of spending health funding to meet the needs of an individual.

Money from a personal health budget may be used for a number of things including therapies, personal care and equipment. Although there are some restrictions on how the budget can be spent, the focus is on using the money to meet agreed health and wellbeing outcomes.

Personalised care and support planning are essential to making personal health budgets work well. A personalised care and support plan helps people to identify their health and wellbeing goals, together with their local NHS team and sets out how the budget will be spent to enable them to reach their goals and keep healthy and safe.

To understand more about personal health budgets, head here.