Self Directed Support

What is Self Directed Support?

Social care for adults is changing, as part of a national programme to make social care services more personalised, so people can have more control over their lives.

The county council is working with other organisations across Surrey to ensure people are offered the appropriate advice, choices and services to identify and meet their support needs.

Part of this change is the introduction of Self Directed Support. This is a new way of assessing, choosing and providing the support people need.

How can Self Directed Support help you?

Self Directed Support is for adults who are entitled to receive social care.

You will have more choice and control over your life, because Self Directed Support allows you to make decisions about the support that you need. It asks you how you want to live, what you want to achieve in life and what support you need to do this.

If you are entitled, Self Directed Support gives you a personal budget. You choose what social care and support services this money is spent on. You can be as creative as you want, as long as the money is spent to meet your agreed, assessed needs.

Thinking about your life, what support you need and what you would like to change so that you can live the way you want can sometimes be difficult, and there is help available if you want it.

A step by step guide is available on the Surrey County Council web site:

www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/A+step-by-step+guide+to+Self+Directed+Support?opendocument

How does this differ from the old funding system?

Surrey Care Association has been working with Surrey County Council, Service Users and their Carers to develop this new approach to how social care in the County is organised and provided.

This new system will mean that people and their carers should have more “choice and control” in their lives. They should be directly involved in thinking about how the money being spent on their social care needs could be used in better ways. This will be partly about meeting basic support needs like help in the home. It could also be about people and their carers thinking about how some of the money could be spent in a way that recognises their individual circumstances (e.g. in terms of family relationships) and interests.

This approach also takes account of the support needs of those people who provide assistance to disabled people as unpaid carers.