Roles & Responsibilities

Roles and responsibilities connected to taking on an individual budget and how IAS can assist.

Who We Are

IAS are committed advocates of Individual Budgets and seek to support individuals/families exercise choice and control. We have considerable experience of supporting people who have taken a Direct Payment/Individual Budget, and there are families who would be happy to talk to people who are interested about taking on this responsibility. IAS is a local not for profit organisation and we work in Wigan, Salford, Trafford and Oldham. We don't have plans to expand, as we want to develop and improve what we already do. We will only take on individually designed services and support to people taking on an Individual Budget.

How We Work

Taking on an Individual Budget is really exciting, but can also be very demanding and daunting. We aim to provide the necessary practical and technical support, so that the experience stays at the exciting end of the spectrum. We regularly review our level of support to ensure we are providing what's required. This way, the experience is very much a positive one, and one which places reasonable, but not overwhelming, demands on people using Individual Budgets. The level of support IAS needs to provide can reduce quite quickly as the person/family gains experience and confidence in managing the Individual Budget.

Our aim is for the person/family to direct and oversee the implementation of the Support Plan and to delegate areas of responsibility to IAS that can otherwise prevent the focus being on the person getting the life they want. It's all too easy to get bogged down in staffing issues, employment matters, rotas and technical matters.

How We Can Help

We have identified a range of roles and responsibilities connected to taking on an Individual Budget, and our approach is to discuss who would take a lead on which ones. These are identified in the attachment, which can be downloaded here, and there is a brief description of each heading following the table. For each heading we would talk through exactly what was wanted, as each situation is different and we aim to customise support accordingly. Our last intention is to take over, but we also don't want to see people struggle unnecessarily. This is very much about figuring it out together.

We would jointly work out the number of hours you would initially want to cover the various delegated responsibilities. This can quickly change, and we would regularly review this with you to ensure the appropriate level of support was being provided. In 2008/9 the hourly rate for management consultancy is £17.50 per hour. We usually start by providing 6-10 hours per week, and that can reduce to 2 hours per week once an established support team is in place.

We hope this gives a flavour of what we do. We prefer to meet and talk as there is a limit to what can be communicated in writing. It's much more about a feeling, the potential for trust and speaking the same language, which tends to emerge through personal contact.

For further discussion contact us here »

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Registered Office: 171 Church Street, Eccles, Manchester. M30 0LU
Reg Company No: 3021418