Work is beginning in earnest for many Primary Care Trusts across the country as they prepare to offer people a personal health budget as part of the Department of Health’s national pilot programme, in Control’s phase two health work or simply as part of local pilots with health budgets. A key part of the process of offering a personal health budget is providing the opportunity for individuals and health care practitioners to develop plans that show how the person will achieve their health outcomes and spend their personal health budget. In order for the money for the budget to be released, those responsible must be able to see and agree a plan that meets clear criteria.

These may be known as care plans, personalised care plans, personal health plans or even support plans for health.

Personal health budgets: First Steps describes good care planning as putting people at the centre of decision making about their care. “It involves a genuine discussion about holistic needs. Whether or not it is attached to a personal health budget, it helps ensure that people receive the best, most appropriately tailored and co-ordinated package of care. The needs of their carers and family should be taken into account. “

Plans can be written in different ways. They may be short or long - with pictures or just text. Crucially this plan must be an integrated co- designed plan between the individual and the clinician. It must contain information about clinical diagnosis and options for treatment or care but be balanced with contextual information from an individual about lifestyle and the impact of their health condition on that lifestyle.

The following documents have been developed as part of the West Midlands SHA Investing for Health Personal Health Budget Pilot Project. They were co produced by people who use services and clinicians.

7 Criteria for a good personal Health plan

Learning from support planning in social care has shown that anybody developing a plan needs a clear framework for what to put in the plan. The budget holders and decision makers agreeing plans should then be signing off plans using the same framework. This document gives an example of a framework for planning that closely aligns with the 7 criteria used in support planning in social care.

File: 7 criteria for Health

Personal Health budgets- What’s in and what’s out 

This paper offers a discussion on what Personal Health Budgets may be spent on.  At this stage this is a consideration of the scope of Personal Health Budget pilots and the considerations Primary Care Trusts may wish to make when developing their pilot work.

This paper reflects guidance from the Department of Health, guidance developed by Helen Sanderson Associates in support planning and local guidance developed by Solihull Care Trust.

File: Personal Health Budgets, what's in and what's out

Personal health plan template

This is a new graphic template created by Helen Sanderson Associates and NHS West Midlands. This template can help you create your own personal health plan/ care plan. 

File: Personal health plan template.pdf

Personal Health Workbook

This workbook is designed to help you develop a Personalised Care Plan/Personal Health Plan. It is divided into three sections. The first section is a series of tools and exercises that can be useful in helping gather information for the plan. The second section is tools and exercises that will help you develop outcomes and then design and plan what your support will look like. The third section is a template of the criteria for what should be in a Personal Health Plan.

File: Personal health workbook.pdf

Key elements of personalised care planning in long term conditions and personal health budget by Jo Harvey.

This work was facilitated by Jo Harvey of Helen Sanderson Associates, and began with a small workshop that included representatives from the Department of Health's personal health budgets delivery team and long term conditions team, the Year of Care National team, the Co-creating Health Initiative, Expert Patients Programme, Norfolk Coalition Of Disabled People and a personal budget user with extensive experience in social care support planning.
This is not a DH policy document or a prescriptive guide to personalised care planning, but it is intended to offer a summary of learning from long term conditions, with the aim to provide a useful framework to pilot sites when approaching the planning of personal health budgets.

File: LTC_discussion_paper_Jul_10

Deciding what a personal health budget can be spent on: developing local processes by Jo Harvey.

This discussion paper outlines a piece of work undertaken by Jo Harvey of Helen Sanderson Associates on behalf of the Department of Health's personal health budgets pilot programme. The aim of this work is to help sites plan and structure local discussions on what personal health budgets can be spent on and the underpinning processes. The work was undertaken in December of 2009 and early 2010.
This paper describes:
• the background to the work;
• what the work involved;
• the structuring of the workshop;
• how each session in the workshop was run, and the techniques used to facilitate discussions.
Each section contains some early learning from three facilitated workshops.

File: Local_processes_-_deciding_what_to_spend_PHB_on

Personalised care planning template and guidance book for developing a personalised care plan for somebody who has a long-term condition and a personal health budget