Responses received to this consultation revealed that the regulations covering Direct Payments for children and young people’s social care were the Community Care, Services for Carers and Children’s Services (Direct Payments) (England) Regulations 2009 rather than the Special Education Needs (Personal Budgets) Regulations 2014 which govern any direct payments for education.
As a consequence a second consultation was held between April 20th and May 17th 2015. You can view this consultation here.
Introduction
Welcome to the Warwickshire County Council Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Social Care Resource Allocation System (RAS) consultation.
Resource Allocation System
The Resource Allocation System (RAS) that Warwickshire wish to consult upon has been developed from work undertaken by Newcastle City Council amongst others and has been soft tested with a limited number of families in Warwickshire.
The RAS will be used to allocate funding for day opportunities and support only, access to overnight respite will be subject to a separate Social Work assessment if required.
The full consultation paperwork comprises 8 documents which come together to form the full RAS, please click on the buttons below to access the documents. The papers are also available on the Warwickshire Local Offer website (www.warwickshire.gov.uk/SEND).
How to participate
To take part in the consultation you will need to read the main Policy Document together with either Appendix 1, 2 or 3 (Resource Allocation Questionnaire) depending on the age of your child or young person.
The other documents have been provided to help you understand more about the process. Appendix 4 shows the conversion of points into pounds/number of hours potentially available in a care package per month, Appendix 5 gives details of the support services available and Appendix 6 contains the regulations set by Parliament regarding Personal Budgets. Appendix 7 contains the details of services available for purchase either by the Council or Service Users via their Personal Budgets.
How the RAS works
An age appropriate questionnaire (Appendix 1 – 3) is completed by the family and worker following an assessment of need carried out to establish whether the child or young person meets the threshold for services by Warwickshire County Council. The questionnaire has been designed to help families and young people participate in decision making about their support and to deliver a clear funding process which is fair to all families. Families and young people will have copies of the questionnaire so the scoring is transparent.
How the questionnaire fits with the Social Care assessment.
The RAS questionnaire is part of the information gathering stage of the Social Care need assessment. Following the initial establishment of need the RAS questionnaire will normally only be completed once a year alongside an annual review.
The questionnaire adds to the assessment by scoring the answers to questions and using the total result to work out how much money should be provided. This will be taken into account when the Social Worker or Family Support Worker evaluates what band of support best describes the young person’s needs. The RAS questionnaire is authorised by a Practice Lead within Children’s Social Care as part of the assessment.
When assessing support needs the young person’s wider circumstances including family and community support should be taken in to account and any funding will build on these resources.
The questionnaire captures a snapshot of support needs at the present moment in time and should relate to the young person’s present circumstances. There will be some examples which do not fit the circumstances of the young person well. These will be addressed on a case by case basis by the Quality Assurance Panel (see below).
How the points are scored
Each statement has a set of points. Some point scores are higher than others because some questions have a bigger impact on the young person and family. For example questions around safety and health have bigger scores with a larger total of points than for other outcomes.
Where there is some overlap between bands and the question could be answered in either band the higher band should be selected; it is easier to reduce support later on rather than deal with the consequences of providing too little support.
There is no expectation that a young person will score in every question, or that every question will be appropriate for every young person. If it is clear that a statement does not relate to an individual they will score zero. An example of this would be when a young person will be at an extremely low risk of bullying because they have a complex learning disability and have a constant level of adult supervision everywhere they go. The questionnaire is balanced so that children with complex needs will score highly in other parts of the questionnaire.
How points help the council make an indicative offer
Once points have been allocated, then the total points will be calculated against a table of funding bands which rise step by step as the points increase. This funding table is shown in Appendix 4. We have based the funding amounts on comparisons with what funding has been appropriate in the past for young people with similar levels of need. This calculation will be taken into account when an indicative allocation is offered to the family to plan with.
How fair allocation of resources will be assured
A Quality Assurance Panel chaired by the Operations Manager for SEND Social Care will consider all completed RAS questionnaires which will be anonymised. Because the information will be anonymous we intend to open the panel up to representatives from parent organisations in order to make the resource allocation system as transparent as possible. The Quality Assurance Panel will agree the amount of resource to be allocated and the worker will communicate this to the family. Families will be able to use the dispute process (detailed in the policy document) in the event they disagree with the panel decision.
This consultation is now closed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to tell us your views.
Consultation feedback will form part of the papers going to Warwickshire County Council Cabinet on 19 February together with papers on the Local Offer consultation and the IDS Social Care budget.
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