Hertfordshire’s Connected Lives model places an emphasis on professional autonomy and creative, personalised preventative and enabling interventions to. prevent people’s needs escalating.
The challenge
Hertfordshire’s Connected Lives model places an emphasis on professional autonomy and creative, personalised preventative and enabling interventions to. prevent people’s needs escalating.
The solution: the Connect and Enable one-off direct payment
Practitioners can agree up to £500 to deliver prevent and enabling options without manager approval. In this way solutions can rapidly be in place to more effectively prevent the persons’ need for care and support escalating.
This option can be used for anyone, whether they meet Care Act eligibility thresholds or not. Once preventative options including referrals to the voluntary sector or other community options have been tried, the Connect and Enable Direct Payment facilitates funding of short term support.
The support is to meet identified outcomes linked to preventing, reducing or delaying the need for longer term care and support and is offered prior to a Care Act eligibility assessment.
One-off direct payments can also be used with people with a personal budget to prevent, reduce or delay the need to increase the personal budget.
Practitioners can agree up to £500, more than this requires manager authorisation.
The aim is to enable practitioners to be inventive, personalised and responsive to people’s needs.
Since this option started three years ago around 40 to 60 of these one-off payments are provided each month.
Examples of Connect and Enable payments leading to better outcomes
One social worker accessed this one-off payment for a pregnant autistic woman who was moved from supported accommodation because of her pregnancy. The one-off payment paid for much needed white goods. Although children’s social care was originally concerned about the young family and there were safeguarding concerns, the outcome has been positive, and the one-off payment helped with her parental responsibilities.
Her independence increased through the support of the one off direct payment and an ongoing direct payment to choose a Personal Assistant. The one off payment helped with maintaining the home environment and both her and her baby’s nutrition through appropriate washing, cooking and food storage.
The outcome focused care and support plan, centered around the woman’s need to be the best mum she could be. The new mum was able to gain enough independence at the next yearly review to not need ongoing support from Adult or Children’s Services.
The payments also made a huge difference to a family carer with an autistic child and grandfather to care for. The family did not want to access the short breaks respite care on offer from adult social care but did want a greyhound after their dog died.
The mum mentioned the emotional impact they experienced, following the loss of their much-loved pet. Mum explained how a dog could help her get out and meet new people, how she could take the dog to see her grandfather and it would be good company for him but most importantly give her a much-needed break from her caring role. She felt sure this would help improve both her mental health and reduce the social isolation they were experiencing due to the impact of the caring role.
The additional costs of keeping a dog were discussed and she was sure she could financially manage the additional monthly expenditure, as she had done so in the past.
The outcome was the dog relieved both mum and the autistic son’s social isolation and improved their wellbeing, allowing a regular break for the mum from her caring role. The dog also helped increase the son’s confidence and he started taking the dog for a walk on his own.