Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
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This talk by Simon Duffy was given to service providers, social workers and commissioners in Bedfordshire on 3rd December 2015. It explores the reasons why ISFs are a helpful tool for achieving citizenship for people with learning disabilities and others who use social care services.
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Getting Behind ISFs - Individual Service Funds
- 1. Getting Behind ISFs Dr Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform
- 2. …that’s a picture of Anne and Nicola Sturgeon the First Minister of Scotland at the 10 Year Conference for Inclusion Glasgow in 2006. Inclusion Glasgow pioneered the use of Individual Service Funds in 1996. Despite the positive outcomes associated with ISFs, they remain largely unused, or even misused, in social care. Why is this? What can we do about it?
- 3. Put simply…
- 4. An Individual Service Fund is a personal budget managed by an organisation.
- 5. Like any tool - on its own - it does nothing.
- 6. But if used well it can help organisations provide flexible support.
- 7. 1. What can we learn from the pioneers? 2. What can we learn from recent implementation? 3. How can we create the right conditions for it? 4. What should we focus on next?
- 8. 1. learning from the pioneers
- 9. Inclusion does lots of things differently. It uses Individual Service Funds so each person’s budget can be used flexibly for their benefit. It employs personal assistants who are matched to each person. It seeks creativity, limits bureaucracy and avoids waste.
- 10. Some examples…
- 15. We explored why people thought Inclusion worked so well for them
- 16. But we wanted to think about why these things help and what is really making the difference. We talked, told stories and drew pictures and after a while 5 big things stood out. These were the things that seemed to make Inclusion different and special.
- 17. Inclusion really believes in people and believes they can and should be full and active members of their own community. People grow in confidence and work to achieve more for themselves when they’ve got people behind them who have faith in them.
- 18. Good support is not about doing tasks like a robot. Good support is about a relationships and it means finding people who can really connect. We only open up to people we can trust. Nobody wants support that is impersonal. We need support from the right people - for us.
- 19. People get a good life by doing what they want in the way they want. Sometimes we all need a bit of help or support, and we need others to do things for us. But we all need to be free. Good support must enable people to exercise freedom and take the level of control that’s right for them.
- 20. Some times we need people to stand up for us, back us up and protect us. We have rights, and sometimes we need help to express ourselves and help us when we might get hurt. We’ve got to stick together, and not give up when the going gets tough.
- 21. Creativity is the art of finding good solutions when there’s a problem. It means being honest and working things out what’s going wrong. Security doesn’t mean everything stays the same; it means knowing people will work with you when things need to change.
- 22. Behind these 5 big things there seemed to be one really big thing: TRUST. Without trust everything falls apart. And trust must be given, tested and it must be earned - together.
- 25. Trust is the key
- 26. bit.ly/IndividualServiceFunds A recent research report on Inclusion’s work describes its positive outcomes over the past 28 years. These outcomes include significantly increased efficiency. This can be downloaded here:
- 30. • Better outcomes, lower costs - over time • Highly flexible and creative support • Stronger community involvement • Multiple forms of support • Inspired by - not by personalisation - but by a commitment to citizenship
- 31. bit.ly/personalised-support If you are interested in the details of how to provide more flexible and personalised support you can read how in this report on Partners for Inclusion (a sister organisation to Inclusion Glasgow). This can be downloaded here:
- 33. One of the most significant recent development has been the breaking up of a block contract by Choice Support and Southwark Council into ISFs. This change has been associated with improvements in outcomes and in efficiency.
- 34. Making positive changes while funding was shrinking involved changes at every level.
- 35. bit.ly/BetterLives The outcomes of this change are described in detail in the Better Lives report which can be downloaded here: What follows are just a few interesting findings.
- 42. It is important to remember some of these important heresies:
- 43. • Better outcomes, lower costs - over time • Limits on social work involvement important • Provider led planning and budgeting • Increasing family involvement is critical • Positive for people and for professionals
- 44. 3. how to create the right conditions
- 45. http://www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk National practice guidance describes how commissioners can support the development of ISFs. What follows are key points.
- 46. What is an ISF?
- 47. • An ISF is basically a personal budget managed by a community organisation (provider, broker, etc.) • It is NOT the contract between the commissioner and the organisation • It is something that can be established by organisations either: (a) under contract to commissioners or (b) under contract to someone with a direct payment or their own private funding
- 49. Commissioners need to ensure that contractual arrangements allow the necessary flexibility. There is more than one way to achieve this goal: • Some contracts may already enable the use of ISFs even if this is not explicit. • Some contracts could be altered by agreement with providers to change how resources are used. • Some new contract models may also be useful.
- 51. If people can’t use or don’t want a direct payment… …then you should use an individual service fund (ISF).
- 52. But the big barrier to Flexible Support is the failure of trust between ‘providers’ and commissioners
- 54. There’s only one trick for trust - try it
- 55. 4. what to do next
- 56. • Remember, remember it’s a tool to create better solutions, not a solution in itself • Don’t over think it… flexibility means specifying less, e.g. no support plans in contracts • Use providers to do most of the work as possible, e.g. let them ‘allocate resources’ • Develop healthy partnerships, e.g. develop a new more empowering script for social workers, e.g. let them help people pick the right support
- 57. Lots more information via: www.individualservicefunds.com