Education, Health and Care plan (EHC plan)
A Personal Budget is money identified to pay for support specified in an Education,
Health and Care plan (EHC plan) for a child or young person with special educational needs. It can include funds from the council for education and social care and from NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for health.
There are four ways you can use a personal budget:
- The council, school or college will look after the Personal Budget for you. This is called an Arrangement or a Notional Budget
- You can receive money directly to manage all or part of the Personal Budget yourself. This is called a Direct Payment. Direct Payments will be monitored regularly to ensure they are used to meet the identified needs and outcomes
- You can opt to have someone else manage the Personal Budget for you. This is called a Third Party Arrangement
- You can have a mixture of some or all of these arrangements
A Personal Budget is not additional funding, it is about using existing funding in a way that suits your needs better.
Who can ask for a personal budget?
Parents of a child or a young person (up to the age of 25 years) with an EHC plan can request a Personal Budget, either during the drafting of an EHC plan or once the plan has been issued and is under review.
Personal budgets may also be requested if there is no EHC plan in place (as there are no identified educational needs), but the child or young person is receiving support from health and/or social care.
What can a personal budget be used for?
Personal budgets can be used to meet the assessed needs of the child or young person, as set out in the EHC plan or the health/social care plan. This must be agreed by the council for education and social care support, and by the CCG for health provision.
The Personal Budget policy for Peterborough is available to download. The policy provides information about the services across education, health and social care that form part of a Personal Budget, how the funding arrangements will work and support available for people in relation to their Direct Payments.
Contact details Education
Statutory Assessment and Monitoring (SAMS) team
Contact details Children’s Social Care
Please contact your allocated social worker.
Contact details Health
You can view a Fact Sheet about Personal Budgets here.
You can find out more on Contact's website and on Scope's website.
Personal health budgets for children, young people and families
NHS England is working with partners across education and social care to support more young people with complex health needs to access personal health budgets.
Personal health budgets can improve people’s quality of life and their experience of care, by helping people to have more choices about how their healthcare needs are met. You can find information about Personal Health Budgets here,