Jargon Busters
WHAT WORDS MEAN
Here are some common words, labels, terms and abbreviations to do with getting help to live at home. They are used by Council officers and other professionals as short-hand to describe official roles, formal methods of working and specialist services.
Click on highlighted words to see what they mean.
Advocacy, Advocate
Advocacy is an individual being supported to express their views, communicate choices and receive services or participate in activitie. There is an important distinction between the role of an advocate and broker – most often a broker will be involved in the implementation of the outcome of the advocacy in some way, whilst the advocate may not.
Assisted Self-Assessment Questionnaire(SAQ)
A SAQ is a set of questions which help to decide what level of support you need. The answers also help the Council to work out how much money you should get in your personal budget. Everyone must complete an SAQ if they wish to get funding from the Council.
Attendance Allowance
The Mental Capacity Act says some people must have an Attorney or Deputy to make decisions about money, health and support. This is for people who can’t decide things for themselves – who ‘lack capacity’.
Brokerage, Broker
A Broker is someone who helps you look at, choose and set-up social care services that meet your personal support needs. They help you to prepare a Support Plan and a budget to show the Council how you will spend your Personal Budget. A Broker can also make any necessary arrangements to get your support working.
Carer
Someone of any age who, without payment, provides help and support to a partner, child, relative, friend or neighbour, who could not manage without their help. This could be offered due to age, physical or mental illness, addiction or disability.
Care Quality Commission
The Commission regulates health and adult social care services in England, whether they're provided by the NHS, local authorities, private companies or voluntary organisations, and protects the rights of people detained under the Mental Health Act.
Circle of Support
A natural or formally established group who support a disabled person in whatever way will enable that person to live and function effectively. Circles of Support are made up of ‘allies’. Allies may be close to the individual, maximise their choice, control and independence and support them in putting their decisions into action. Allies often include friends, relatives, partners, religious leaders, advocates, work colleagues but may also include bank managers, accountants, advocates, solicitors or any other trustworthy person.
Citizenship
Promoting, protecting and ensuring the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons with disabilities, and the promotion of respect for their inherent dignity.
Detailed citizen’s rights include:
• Having legal capacity on an equal basis with other citizens, individual autonomy and the freedom to make one’s own choices.
• Being supported to grow up in families and enjoy family life.
• Fully developing one’s potential through inclusive education and other means.
• Getting the personal support required to live independently and be included in the community.
• Being employed.
• Enjoying the highest attainable standard of health.
• Being protected from discrimination and having good access to information, services and the wider environment.
• Participating in public life.
In personal terms ‘citizenship’ can be encapsulated in the following:
• Self determination: ‘I say what matters to me and how I want to live’.
• Inclusion: ‘I’m included in my community and benefit from its services’.
• Personalised support: ‘I get the assistance I need to live as I want’.
Direct Payment (DP)
Direct Payments are cash payments made to individuals who have been assessed as eligible to receive social care or support from their Social Services Dept,. Instead of the Council arranging or providing services directly, you are given payments that amounts to an equivalent cost. If you use DP money to employ your own support worker or personal assistant, then the Council makes monthly payments into an account that you have set up for this purpose. Alternatively, a one-off DP can be made to help pay or contribute towards the cost of an item of equipment.
Direct Payments is one way Personal Budget money can be held and managed by people who are eligible to get Council-funded support. It is the way recipients have greatest choice and control over their spending.
Directly Commissioned Services
Directly commissioned services are services that the Council supply to you. The Council makes the arrangements with the supplier or supplies them themselves. These might be something like a ‘home-help’ service, meals-on-wheels or day centres. Money for providing this service is taken from the recipient’s Personal Budget.
Disabled Facilities Grant
Is a local council grant to help towards the cost of adapting your home to enable you to continue to live there. A grant is paid when the council considers that changes are necessary to meet your needs, and that the work is reasonable and practical.
Disability-related benefits
Some disability related benefits and schemes include:
• Disability Living Allowance
• Attendance Allowance
• Employment and Support Allowance
• Incapacity Benefit
• Personal Budgets
• Direct payments - arranging your own care and services
• Equipment for independent living
• Disabled Facilities Grant
• Personal equipment, prescriptions and hospital travel
• Value Added Tax (VAT) relief on equipment and services
• Independent Living Fund
• Access to Work Scheme
• Job Grant
• Blind person's allowance
• Families and disabled children
• Council Tax reduction for disabled people
• Television licence discount (Visually impaired)
• Vehicle Road Tax exemption
• Blue Badge parking scheme
• The Motability Scheme
• Community and public transport
• Disabled Students' Allowances
• Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit
• Constant Attendance Allowance
Disability
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) regards people to be disabled if they have:
• a mental or physical impairment
• this has an adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities
• the adverse effect is substantial
• the adverse effect is long-term (meaning it has lasted for 12 months, or is likely to last for more than 12 months or for the rest of your life).
There are some special provisions, for example:
• If your impairment has substantially affected your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, but doesn't any more, it will still be counted as having that effect if it is likely to do so again
• if you have a progressive condition, and it will substantially affect your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities in the future, you will be regarded as having an impairment which has a substantial adverse effect from the moment the condition has some effect on your ability to carry out normal day to day activities.
• if you have been diagnosed as having cancer, HIV infection or multiple sclerosis you will automatically be considered as ‘disabled’.
• if you are registered as blind or partially sighted or certified as blind or partially sighted by a consultant ophthalmologist, you willl automatically be considered as “disabled”.
• people who have had a disability in the past but are no longer disabled are covered by certain parts of the DDA.
Disability Living Allowance
Sometimes referred to as DLA – this is a tax-free benefit for children and adults who need help with personal care or have walking difficulties because they are physically or mentally disabled.
Domiciliary Care Agency
A Domiciliary Care Agency is defined in section 4 (3) of the Care Standards Act as “an undertaking which consists of or includes arranging the provision of personal care in their own homes for persons who by reason of illness, infirmity or disability are unable to provide it for themselves without assistance”.
The words “unable to provide it for themselves without assistance” mean that personal care – in this context – has a narrower application than in the context of a care home. It will include assistance with bodily functions and physical care that falls just short of intimate personal care, such as helping a person to get dressed. But it could not, within this definition, extend to encouragement and emotional support, since this is not a form of personal care that a person could be said to be able or unable to provide for themselves.
Where an agency arranges to provide personal care to a person in his or her own home, it must register with Care Quality Commission as a domiciliary care agency.
Equality Impact Assessment (EIA)
An Equality Impact Assessment looks at a particular change, such as introducing Self-Directed Support or Means testing, to see how it may affect different groups of people. If there are negative consequences, an action plan is put in place to minimise or avoid these and where possible opportunities for promoting equality are maximized.
Incapacity Benefit
If you can't work because of illness or disability you may be able to get Incapacity Benefit (IB), a weekly payment for people under State Pension age.
Independent Living
Independent living’ does not mean doing things for yourself, or living on your own. Instead, it means:
• having choice and control over the assistance and/or equipment needed to go about your daily life,
• having equal access to housing, transport and mobility, health, employment education and training opportunities.
Self-directed Support is the route and Personal Budgets are the ‘vehicle’ to achieving the goals and outcomes of Independent Living.
Independent Living Advisors (ILA)
ILAs support recipients of Direct Payments. They advise, help arrange and support people to employ thier own personal (care) assistant and to become and remain effective employers.
Independent Living Fund
The Independent Living Fund makes payments to disabled people to help them lead a more independent life. You can apply to the Independent Living Fund if you:
• live in the UK
• are over 16 and under 65 when your application is received
• already get social services support worth at least £320 a week or £16,640 a year - this can include direct payments or services from your local council, like going to a day centre
• get or are entitled to the higher rate care component of Disability Living Allowance
• have less than £23,000 in savings or capital - this includes any money your partner has, if you have a partner
Individual Service Fund
Money for a Personal Budget is paid direct to a support service provider or agency. Together, the agency agrees with the service user how the money is to be spent and then spends the money on behalf of the individual.
Financial assessment (Personal contribution).
A Council test of your financial means. The financial assessment compares your income, savings and expenditure to work out your ability to pay or contribute towards the cost of your social care support.
Outcomes (describing quality of life)
Outcomes are the things that a person wants to achieve or change in their life, as a direct result of being able to get the support that they need. These may be quite different for different people but common outcomes include: "getting out and seeing more people" or "stay fit and healthy". By starting with an outcome, you can then plan what support you need to achieve it.
Personal Budget (PB)
A Personal Budget is an annual sum of money the Council will set aside for you. PB money must buy the services and support you need to live at home and be part of your community. All Personal Budgets in Richmond are funded by money used by the Council to pay for Adult Social Services.
Individual Budget (IB)
An Individual Budget is an amount of money that brings together different funds from more than one government agency. It is used in the same way as a Personal Budget but is distinguished from a PB in that it is made up of money from several funding sources.
Indicative Budget
The provisional amount of money the council will set aside for one year to pay for your social care or support. It becomes a Personal Budget following deductions (if any) of your own financial contribution and any other allowances.
‘paFinder’
A RUILS’ service that matches ‘job seekers’ to employers of personal assistants (Pas). These potential employers are either self-funders or people who choose to receive their Personal Budget by means of Direct Payments.
Personal Assstant (PA)
A person employed to enable a disabled person to do the tasks that the disabled person finds hard to do. Unlike a traditional ‘carer’ (who would adopt the dominant role of provider or one who would ‘look after’ or ‘watch over’ the passive disabled recipient), a personal assistant occupies a more equal role as a facilitator or enabler, willing to be guided, to back up and support the disabled person in whatever task or activity the disabled person wishes to undertake.
Personalisation
The Government’s word for the new way of organising public services. Everyone who uses support should have choice and control over that support.
As the name suggests ‘personalisation’ is primarily concerned with how to design support arrangements so they are more personal - which means they need to fit the person, to be suitable for them and to give that person as much control over their support as they wish to have.
Person Centred Plannig(PCP)
Person centred planning should not be confused with support planning. It is a
separate process (but with many links and some cross over), and is perhaps best viewed as a process which belongs solely to the person whereas support planning is the compact a person makes with the Council in relation to how their personal budget is spent (amongst other things).
Person-centred planning is an approach that focuses entirely on you as the individual service user. As such, it requires all interactions to be conducted at a pace and in ways that are completely in tune with the individuals preferred way of working. This demands that, those applying a Person Centred approach, must get to know the individual well, including how they communicate and make decisions. For individuals where their capacity to consent is questioned, this process may also necessitate engaging all of the people who are important to the person including family, friends, neighbours, support workers and other professionals involved in their lives.
By adopting this approach, the outcomes will be specific to the individual. They will create a comprehensive and unique portrait of who the person is and what they want to do with their life. In addition, anyone carrying out person-centred plans or actions on behalf of the individual, will be assured that they do so with the persons full agreement and knowledge.
Resource Allocation System(RAS)
A Resource Allocation System is a way of working out how much money you are entitled to get as an annual Personal Budget. It is based on a series of questions you are asked in the SAQ (self assessment questionnaire). Each question has a score attached and the final score is used to work out how much money each person should get.
Re-ablement
Re-ablement is short-term intensive support of a few months duration, following an illness or an accident. It aims to help you back to living at home and to maintain your future independence. If longer or on-going support is needed then this is offered under the system called Self Directed Support.
RUILS (Richmond Users Independent Living Scheme)
The local user-run and led organisation that makes Self-Directed Support (and Direct Payments) happen.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is defined primarily by its goal - keeping people safe, and
more particularly, keeping people safe from abuse by other people.
Self-Directed Support (SDS)
Self Directed Support is a new way of organising ‘social care’. You control the money for support – your Personal Budget. You choose what support you want and how to spend your Budget. You can get help to do this if you want. In 2007, Richmond Council adopted this new social care system.
Service Specification
This is a written report that sets out, in detail, what service is required from a support service provider. It says how much support is required, when, how, where and by whom. This specification can help support agencies decide whether they can offer the prescribed support, and at what cost. When the agency responds with a description of the service they can offer, you (the customer) can compare their reply to see whether the provider has really understood and followed your service specification.
If you employ your own support staff, then their job description acts as your service specification.
Your Support Plan could lead to several service specifications, each for support that will help you in a different part of your life.
Social Care
Services and activities that help people to live independent, active and healthy lives and to be part of the community. A lot of these services and activities help older or disabled people to remain living in their own home.
Social Model of Disability
The social model of disability is about nothing more complicated than a clear focus on the economic, environmental and cultural barriers encountered by people who are viewed by others as having some form of impairment - whether physical, sensory or intellectual. The barriers disabled people encounter include inaccessible education systems, working environments, inadequate disability benefits, discriminatory health and social support services, inaccessible transport, houses and public buildings and amenities, and the devaluing of disabled people through negative images in the media - films, television and newspapers.
Support Plan
A support plan says what type of help you need to achieve beneficial outcomes to your well-being, independence and way of life. For many people their personal support plan will need to cover how their personal care or support needs will be met but also how they may achieve an outcome like, "get out and see more people" or "stay fit and healthy". Every outcome in your plan will answer the who?, how?, when?, where? and how much ? questions that will make it happen. In addition, it will tell others what you are like – your strengths and preferences and wishes or dreams – and may alter over time should you wish to change or add things.
Supported Living
Supported Living is usually for people who might otherwise be in residential care. It is a place to live in the community where suitable support is provided and where you have your own front door.
Trust
A group of people who the law says can look after your money for you. The group has to set itself up as a legal Trust. This isn’t hard to do. (These are sometimes called “Independent Living Trusts” to distinguish them from other kinds).
YourSay Group
A local group of people, eligible to receive Council and other social care support, who advise service providers as to the accessibility and effectiveness of their services. To take part in the YourSay group contact the Helpline: 020 8831 6083 or e-mail: info@ruils.co.uk. |
