This is the report of a series of pilot schemes commissioned by the Department for Health exploring how co-operative structures can be used to enable groups of care users to pool their resources under direct payments/personal budgets and take control of their care.

Download the full document as a pdf here (270KB)

Supported by the Department of Health

This project was established by Co-operativesUK following earlier work, which had identified the real benefits that direct payments can deliver when services users are able to control their own care. It also removes the potential problems of the direct employment model for many people, including older people.

 

It sets out to establish the viability of mutual models where direct payment recipients join a co-operative, retaining individual control over their own care, but collectively share the responsibilities of employment, insurance, training, recruitment and other organisational burdens, with a view that these models would increase access to the benefits of direct payments to a wider group of people.

These are models that allow people not able or willing to take up direct payments individually, by collaborating to gain all the benefits that come from service user management of care. The collaborative or co-operative structure allows risk and administration to be shared and provides relatively easy access to people who are only receiving care for short period, are good employers and are registered under the Care Standards Act.

Whilst originally envisaged to take advantage specifically of direct payments, these models are well suited to delivering the personalisation agenda and utilise emerging individual and personalised budget regimes.

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The whole of this document may shortly be placed on this website for viewing directly as web pages

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