"Local authorities all have different rules..."

The SDS Forum
1

I’ve heard this from several places now. Has anyone else heard this? Where does it come from?

It’s not really true is it? The essentials of SDS law and Direct Payment law are all given in Primary Legislation, Regulations and Statutory Guidance, no? Am I missing anything?

EDIT: I’ll expand on this a bit. Let’s go through the key points of a Direct Payment, which seems to be the option people are having a lot of trouble with.

  1. Eligibility. This actually is a matter of local policy, although from what I’ve seen local policies seem to be very similar with the four levels of need, and often only offering SDS for critical or substantial needs.

  2. Information. Social work must inform you of the nature and effect of all four choices. That’s not a matter of local policy - they have to do it.

  3. The LA must offer you all four choices. Again, no leeway there. The only exceptions to this are clearly defined in law, the LA may not make their own rules as far as I can tell.

  4. They must collaborate with you in preparing a support plan and mutually agree the outcomes. They can’t just do it by themselves and decide the outcomes for you.

  5. They must give you the DP into an account set up by you in your name and controlled by you UNLESS you specifically ask them to do something different. No leeway for local policy there either.

  6. They can’t give you a list of what you can and can’t spend the money on - it’s a matter of legislation and statutory guidance that you can spend the money in whatever way you like provided you can show that it meets the agreed outcomes and isn’t criminal.

  7. There is leeway on monitoring arrangements, but these must be reasonable and proportionate.

  8. On recovery of unspent funds - this is a matter of debate. We’ll need to do a deep dive on p57 of the guidance to settle this.

…so what have I missed? No doubt there are plenty of very minor issues that an LA may have discretion over - but what about the major components of a Direct Payment - have I missed any major aspects of a DP that is left open to the LA to make their own rules about?

2

Hi Josh

Good to read your thoughts on this and it’s how I envisage it to be but like you I think I must be missing something.

I’ve enquired about and I’ve been informed the LA have a right to use their own procedures in making the direct payment.i.e. they can decide not to give you a lump sum but split it up into parts.

This would mean you get a part sum of the budget then you have to go back and ask for the next payment etc etc. until the budget is used. So it’s not always a lump sum into a bank account that you hold which I thought a direct payment was it can be split into different payments given to you as you need them. This of course could cause delay as I don’t imagine it would always be smooth having it released.

It seems that it can be called a direct payment as they are giving you the whole budget into your account for you to handle but done in the way they choose to handle it. Not very independent or free choice for the budget holder is my opinion if they have to keep approaching a LA to ask them to authorise and release each direct payment.

This could of course be total nonsense and I’ve been given wrong information.