Personal Health Budgets

Personal Health Budgets for people eligible for continuing healthcare (CHC)

If you have been assessed as being eligible for CHC or children’s continuing care, there are four initial stages in arranging a PHB:

  1. Find out how a Personal Health Budget could work for you
    Talk to the NHS team who look after you to find out if you would be eligible for a personal health budget and to find out how PHB’s work for people who receive Continuing Health Care. An important part of organising a PHB is agreeing how the care you receive will benefit your health – your team will talk this through with you.

    You can talk to our Continuing Health Care Team or to someone from the multi-disciplinary team that carries out the assessment of your health and wellbeing needs. This might be a social worker, community nurse, social worker or other health professional.

  2. Work out the amount of money that may be available
    Once your Continuing Health Care funding is confirmed, at your three-month review your PHB team or continuing health care nurse can work out the amount of money that would be available to you as a PHB. The amount of money will be based on your health and wellbeing needs and what a conventional package of care would look like. Talk to your continuing health care Nurse if you have any questions or concerns.

  3. Develop a personalised care and support plan
    Once you have decided how you would like your PHB to be managed, you will need to develop a personalised care and support plan. This is developed by you and your support planner – together you will design a plan that meets your needs and meets NHS funding rules.

  4. Organising care and support
    As soon as your care and support plan has been approved, your PHB will need to start on an agreed date.

    You can choose to have your PHB as a direct payment, a third-party managed account, or a notional budget, or a combination of all three as described above.

  5. Make sure the money is working for you
    Your continuing healthcare nurse is responsible for making sure the help and support you are receiving is meeting your needs. As your needs change, your PHB may also need to change to make sure it is giving you the most appropriate support and safely meeting your needs. Eligibility for continuing health care funding is also reviewed regularly.