Published: Tuesday, 12th May, 2009 6:00pm

Revolution in social care gets thumbs up

by Adam Hewitt

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ADULTS needing social care will get cash to spend however they want.

Instead of Wokingham Borough Council deciding how people should best be cared for and doing it for them, people can now opt to be paid the same amount of money and take control of their care - by employing carers, socialising, buying equipment, adapting houses and cars, or anything else they fancy.

The project, Putting People First, is being rolled out borough-wide after a successful pilot project and was given a full launch on Thursday at Earley"s Salvation Army hall in Chalfont Close. It has been controversial elsewhere in the country, with some people spending the cash in unorthodox ways, but the Wokingham borough users are enthusiastic.

Laura Jones, 27, from Woodley, has been a dancer with StopGAP for seven years and is regularly on the road. She has a spinal injury and so needs care and said: 'Originally I had to liaise with care agencies through the council, but now I have the direct payments I have a support worker who travels with us when we tour.

'Now I"ve got one person who I know, who"s dedicated to my needs. It was a bit scary at first, but it"s definitely so much easier and worth sticking with. It"s made life so much easier and I feel so much more in control.'

Retired priest Ken Humphreys and wife Hilda, from central Wokingham, have been married for 62 years and recently switched to individual care budgets for Hilda"s dementia.

Mr Humphreys said: 'We had some consultations and it looked as if my wife would have to go into care. My daughter thought that would be absolutely essential but I would have hated it, I wouldn"t have felt complete. So they set up a new package, two carers, four times a day.

'The biggest benefit is the control. I can really say that her life has a real quality with this system.'

Some older people have chosen to employ a carer rather than be put in a home, and others spend the money on socialising rather than day centres. WBC expects to have around half of its 2,000 adult social care users signed up by March 2011.

WBC community care interim manager Stuart Rowbotham said: 'It"s not about saying 'over to you, we"re not bothered any more", it"s about saying 'over to you - what do you want to do?"'

Elaine Cotterill travelled from St Helens on Merseyside to tell her story of how a similar scheme changed her life with her husband John, who has multiple sclerosis.

She said: 'What went before was a blanket attempt to cover the masses, but individual budgets are individual - there"s no shopping list of what you can and can"t do so long as it"s legal and in budget.'

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