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A personal budget is the amount of money across one or all areas of education, health and social care to meet the needs of the child or young person as outlined in the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. The personal budget can be a notional amount of money that is used by the local authority to provide support, either by itself or by another provider.
Families can request a proportion of their personal budget to be issued as a direct payment to enable the family to purchase that support themselves. This would offer more choice and flexibility to meet identified needs.
The personal budget will be outlined in the EHC plan so all involved can see how needs are being met and at what cost. If some of the personal budget is given as a direct payment, a support plan will be developed with the family to outline how they intend to spend the direct payment, on what, how much and to meet which needs within the EHC plan. Direct payments will be monitored regularly as they are now.