Hi looking for some advice.
My son has a congenital beain condition abd suffers extreme pain with low muscle tone.We have been taking him to use a hot tub regularly which has helped immensely with the pain.
He has an sds budget and on speaking to his social worker regarding purchasing a hot tub for the the garden from the budget we were informed that the amount for the tub would be deducted from his budget every year even though it is a one off cost is this correct.
Thankyou in advance for any advice regarding this.
Hi Laura,
Many thanks for the post. That’s a really interesting question.
It sounds like the cost of the hot tub would be a one-off cost. However, with pieces of equipment like this, there can be some other regular costs to consider, such as
- Maintenance
- Repairs
- Insurance
It can be quite helpful if there is an agreement set out about how these on-going costs would be covered at the start, including the question of ‘ownership’.
So I can understand that there might be certain on-going costs related to the hot tub and it might be helpful to know if you can use the allocated SDS budget to pay for these costs. It would certainly seem like a relevant use of the direct payment, to make sure the hot tub is available to meet your son’s needs.
There is actually something written in the SDS Statutory Guidance about using a direct payment to buy a piece of equipment. The Guidance states:
‘A direct payment arrangement means that control and responsibility passes to the supported person.This means that ownership and responsibility for arranging the maintenance of the equipment or adaptation can pass to the supported person. In some instances it may make sense for responsibility for maintenance to rest with the authority. The key priority should be to make use of the user/supported person agreement to discuss and clarify questions of maintenance, ownership and issues such as the donation of any equipment to the authority, NHS, provider or fellow citizens after it is no longer required’ (p.22) (my emphasis)
It might be the case that you’ve already had discussions with the Local Authority about these things, but if not, it might still help to clarify some of these.
I hope that helps but do come back to the Forum if you need to discuss anything further.
Many thanks,
Mark
Thankyou very much for your reply and the information it is a great help to me really appreciate it .