Personal health budgets can provide an opportunity for people in their final weeks and months of life to have a more personalised experience of care.

They can give people more choice about who provides their care, where their care is received, and their preferred place of death.

People who become eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare funding under the fast track pathway have a legal right to have a personal health budget.

People receiving palliative and end of life care, who are not eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare, may still be able to access a personal health budget. This depends on the local integrated care board  and their plans to make personal health budgets available to people beyond those groups who have a legal right to have one

How can personal health budgets support people receiving palliative and end of life care?

Personalised care and support planning is an essential part of a personal health budget and means that people have conversations much earlier on about what their needs are and how they wish to be supported in their last weeks and months of life, thus improving their experience of palliative and end of life care.

Providing personal health budgets can help to achieve the collective commitment of the Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care partnership which sets out a vision for improving palliative and end of life care for all. The National Framework for Local Action sets out six ambitions:

• Each person is seen as an individual
• Each person gets fair access to care
• Maximising comfort and wellbeing
• Care is coordinated
• All staff are prepared to care
• Each community is prepared to help

Support for professionals

A range of support is available for providers and commissioners who are interested in finding out how personal health budgets can improve care.

If you work within the NHS, a local authority or a voluntary sector partner, and would like to know more about personal health budgets, you can sign up to the Personalised Care Collaborative Network  to access a range of resources, share learning and discuss issues with colleagues across the country.

For more information please email england.personalhealthbudgets@nhs.net.

To find out more about our palliative and end of life care work visit our webpages and/or join our FutureNHS network by contacting england.palliativeandendoflife@nhs.net.