Glossary
| Assessment of need | Used to identify an individual's social care and support needs and their eligibility for care and support through use of Fair Access to Care Services eligibility criteria. Most assessments are carried out by an assessing practitioner involving the individual needing support. The Government's personalisation agenda is encouraging greater self assessment. |
| Brokerage | A service within Hackney that can help people gain access to the social care and support services they need. |
| Care Services Improvement Partnership | An advisory body reporting to the Department of Health which supports positive implementation of care policy at local levels. www.csip.org.uk |
| Citizenship | The rights and responsibilities of being part of the community and involved in public life and affairs. |
| Direct payment | Money given to a service user to enable them to arrange and be in control of the services they choose to meet their needs. |
| Exploitation | To selfishly utilise the service user or system for your own gains. This often relates to making profits at another's expense |
| Fair Access to Care Services | Department of Health guidance for councils providing a framework for setting eligibility criteria for adult social care. Its aim is to achieve fairer and more consistent eligibility decisions across the country. |
| Fairer Charging for Care Services | Department of Health guidance for councils who decide to charge for any non-residential services on how to design reasonable and fair charging policies. It seeks to ensure greater consistency in charging policies across the country. |
| Financial assessment | An assessment of an individual's finances to identify how much they will be expected to contribute to the cost of their care and support services. |
| in Control | National project that has developed a model of self directed support. Following involvement in pilots of in Control and Individual Budgets, they are now involved in the in Control Total programme which seeks to extend self directed support to all service users. www.in-control.org.uk |
| Independent Living Fund | Charitable trust that administers money provided by the Government to support the cost of disabled people who need substantial assistance to live in the community. www.ilf.org.uk |
| Indicative allowance | The maximum amount of funding that can be made available to meet an individual's social care and support needs. The indicative allowance is the amount identified through use of a Resource Allocation System. This is different from the individual budget which is the actual amount of funding to be provided based on the costings identified by the individual in their support plan. |
| Indirect payment | Money given to a service user's trust fund. The trustees use this to arrange the services the individual has chosen to meet their needs. |
| Individual budget | What a service user can spend on the help they need to achieve what is important to them. |
| Individual Service Fund | Payments made from an individual budget to a provider on the understanding that it will be spent according to the individual's support plan. |
| Individual Support or Service Fund | When a service provider agrees to hold and spend someone's Individual Budget on the understanding that it will be spent according to his or her individual plan and kept in a separate bank account. |
| Mental capacity | The Mental Capacity Act says "a person must be assumed to have the capacity to make decisions for themselves unless it is established that they lack capacity". This means people must have an assessment of their capacity before decisions can be made on their behalf. www.dca.gov.uk |
| Outcome | The changes, benefits or other results that happen as a result of provision of social care and support. |
| Person centred planning | Putting people needing support at the centre of planning for their lives. It is based on listening to people to find out what is most important to them and what they want from their lives. The next step is to help people get those things. |
| Personal budget | Sometimes used instead of the term 'Individual Budget'. Some definitions say personal budgets only include Adult Social Care funding while individual budgets can include other funding sources. |
| Personalisation | Government led agenda to ensure that every person who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, will have choice and control over the shape of that support in all care settings. |
| Resource Allocation System (RAS) | The system by which money is allocated from available Adult Social Care funding, according to set criteria, to contribute to a service user's individual budget. |
| Risk management | To assess, minimise and prevent potential problems in a project or situation |
| Safeguarding | To ensure the safety and protection of the service user as a precautionary measure |
| Score | Part of the Resource Allocation System. This asks a series of questions from which a score relating to the individual's level of need is obtained. This score is then used to identify the individual's indicative allowance. |
| Self assessment | The Government's personalisation agenda is encouraging greater use of self assessment where individuals are able to identify their own needs and eligibility for support. |
| Self determination | An individual's right to make their own decisions with support or representation where needed. See Mental capacity. |
| Self directed support | Social care support which service users choose, organise and control to meet their needs in a way that suits them, using resources available to them to achieve what is important to them. |
| Support plan | Developed by service users to describe how they will use all the resources available to them to achieve what is important to them. |
| Supporting People | Government programme funding housing-related services for vulnerable people which complement existing care services. |
| Transformation | The transformation of social care was signalled in the Department of Health's social care Green Paper, Independence, Well-being and Choice (2005), reinforced in the White Paper, Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services in 2006 and confirmed in the landmark 'Putting People First' Concordat in December 2007. This transformation aims to implement personalisation of social care so that every person who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, will have choice and control over the shape of that support in all care settings. (An early name for in Control Total was Total Transformation.) |
| Trust Fund | A legally set up body to receive and administer direct payments on behalf of a service user. The service user will in effect receive an indirect payment. |
Page updated: 16 Jul 2010
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