A personal SEN budget is for individuals with complex learning support needs that cannot be met by the school. A SEN Personal Budget is an amount of money Bury Council has identified to meet some of the needs in your child’s EHC plan. It can include funds from the local authority for education and social care. A SEN Personal Budget can only be used for services that will help to meet agreed outcomes in the EHC plan.
Not everyone has a personal budget, it will depend on the support that is needed and agreed in the EHC plan. The benefits and responsibilities of a personal budget will be shared with you when you discuss your options, so that you can decide if a personal budget is right for you.
There are four ways you can use a SEN personal budget:
- direct payments – this is where you receive money yourself to buy and manage services
- an arrangement where your local authority or education provider holds the money and commissions the services included in the EHC plan as directed by you (sometimes called a notional budget)
- third-party arrangements – where the money is paid to and managed by an organisation on your behalf
- a combination of the three ways above
Managing a personal budget
Parents manage a child’s personal budget up until the end of year 11, the end of compulsory school age. After this, a young person can take responsibility for the budget if they have the capacity to do so.
Personal budgets can be managed in different ways:
- Direct Payments - Is where you receive the funding directly so that you can buy and manage services specified in the EHC plan yourself.
- An arrangement or notional budget - The council, school or college hold the funds and commission the support specified in the EHC plan.
- Third party arrangements - Where direct payments are paid to and managed by an individual or organisation on behalf of the child’s parents of the young person
- A combination of the above
Further information
Not everyone can have a personal budget and only certain types of support can be paid for using the money available.
Parents and young people are able to request a personal budget when the local authority has completed a statutory Education Health Care (EHC) assessment and confirmed that it will prepare an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP). They may also request a personal budget during a statutory review of an existing EHCP.
A personal budget is a possibility when meeting the assessed special educational needs of a child or young person requires a flexible and personalised approach. The personal budget provides flexibility in providing what is different or additional to what is usually available from the setting, provider, or services (whether education, health or care), and must be designed to secure the outcomes in the child or young person’s EHCP.
Personal budgets may therefore offer a different and flexible way of meeting the needs and delivering the provision identified in a child’s or young person’s EHC plan, but do not provide additional funding or support above and beyond this.
A personal budget must represent an efficient and effective use of resources (i.e. value for money), and must not have an adverse impact on other services.
Where a direct payment is proposed for special educational provision, the local authority must secure the agreement of the early years setting, school or college, if any of the provision is to be delivered on that institution's premises.