direct payments/individual budget

Does anyone have direct payments or individual budget? What is the difference/ How can I go about getting either? or both? How do they work?

Hi I get Direct Payments. I’m not sure what the difference is with an individual budget, but with DP I get given money every 4 weeks. This money then gets used to employ somebody to do things like cleaning,shopping or picking up prescriptions. The money is also used to pay for any of the admin related costs. The person you employ can be pretty much anybody you like, as long as you don’t live with them. I can’t remember if relatives are allowed though. I have to fill in a quarterly audit form for the local council, confirming what’s been spent. There is an organisation who process the timesheets and tell me how much needs to be paid, and they also take care of the tax side of things and tell me how much needs to be paid to the inland revenue. Everything was set up by my council’s social services. They did an assessment to see how much support I needed, and what sorts of things needed doing. If you speak to your local social services dept they should be able to help. Dan