Individualised funding, social inclusion and the politics of mental health

This paper explores how the changing nature of welfare provision can open up, or close down, opportunities for people with mental health needs to organise their own lives and develop their own communities. In particular it focuses on the rise of individualised funding or direct payments, where individuals can receive money instead of services in order to plan, purchase and direct their own support arrangements

Friend or Foe: Towards a Critical Assessment of Direct Payments

Direct payments enable individuals to purchase their own care rather than have directly provided services. This article unpacks the complexities involved in the implementation of direct payments by addressing the need to reconcile the strong evidence of their benefits with emerging concerns about the wider consequences of their implementation. One practice that highlights the conflicts at the heart of direct payments is the employment of personal assistants. While directly employing personal assistants offers maximum benefit for recipients, it also produces the strongest concerns. Therefore, an understanding of the context of direct payments, specifically the practice of employing personal assistants, is used to explore these complexities in greater depth. The discussion concludes by arguing for a more critical awareness of the wider context in which direct payments are being developed in order to understand how this context can open up or limit opportunities for greater self-determination. It suggests a number of factors that need to be addressed to ensure that direct payments continue to be a progressive strategy. These include reconciling conflicting ideologies such as those advocating individual choice and/or collective provision; the need for political action to secure adequate resources; and the development of alternative strategies such as cooperatives to address the collective needs of direct payment recipients and workers

Direct Payments, Independent Living and Mental Health

This report is based on a study of the National Pilot to implement direct payments in mental health which took place across five Local Authority sites in England from February 2001 to July 2003. The evaluation used the experiences of the pilot sites as a vehicle through which to understand the factors involved in successfully implementing direct payments in mental health. The evaluation took place in 2002-2003 during the last year of the pilot. This chapter provides an overview of the direct payments and mental health literature and outlines the background to both the National Pilot and the evaluation