A Young Person’s Guide to Personal Budgets

Education, Health and Care Plans

The new Education, Health and Care plans (EHC Plan) have started to replace Statements of Special Educational Need.

An EHC Plan helps to show what you want in your future. As part of the EHC Plan some young people are able to receive a personal budget.

A personal budget

A personal budget is money, which you get from the local authority to pay for things you need or may want. The money you get is to help you achieve your aspirations for the future.

What is a personal budget and how you can get one: - please see the video [here] that has been created by the KIDS Young People’s Engagement Group (YPEG).

What is it for?

The money you get is to help you achieve your aspirations for the future. This can be by providing support with health (this may be for a range of things like specialised wheelchairs or waterproof hearing aids) education (this can be for support and learning that you need to achieve your hopes) and care (such as social and leisure activities and also support for your family)

Personal budgets mean you get more choice about what the money is spent on and the support you get.

You can get your personal budget in different ways: 

• You and your family can look after it yourself, this means you pay for the support you need. This is called a Direct Payments. 
• Someone from the local authority can look after your personal budget for you. 
• Another person/group can look after it for you like your school, a local organisation or service provider. 
• Or you can choose more than one of the options above.

The local authority works out how much money you should get by doing an assessment and writing an education, health and care plan (EHC plan).

An assessment is a way of finding out how much support a person needs to achieve their hopes for the future. This might mean going to a meeting or filling out a form.

Thank you to KIDS for sharing the above information.