NHS England today sets out action to help people manage their own health by giving them more choice and control about the personal care they receive.

Three key schemes will be announced at the NHS England Personal Health Budget conference:

• Personal Health Budgets will replace the current wheelchair voucher scheme as part of efforts to improve services for over 1.2 million people that currently use wheelchairs.
• The seven sites chosen to develop new ways of delivering choice in maternity care, offering mums-to-be access to services that best suit their needs and preferences.
• The publication of the Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC) Emerging Framework, setting out the future model of care for patients and families with the most complex needs

Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, said: “We are determined to give people more power and control over their own healthcare rather than just informing people about decisions taken by others on their behalf.”

On Personal Wheelchair Budgets – a new approach to wheelchair commissioning will replace the current voucher scheme. Wheelchair users have found a number of challenges with the existing scheme, now 20 years old, including a lack of information and guidance around maintenance, repair and replacement as well as a limited number of providers where a voucher can be redeemed.

The new personal health budget scheme will offer more choice of where wheelchairs can be bought as well as a detailed care plan that will help users make informed decision about their wheelchair. The care plans will also go beyond purchasing the chair to also include guidance on future maintenance, repair and replacement needs.

It means that a wheelchair will form part of a person’s wider care, catering for their individual needs and ensuring a more joined-up approach, a key aim of NHS England’s Five Year Forward View. The new approach will also help NHS England collect meaningful data on wheelchair provision that will further help improve services and address variations in provision across the country.

Ruth Owen, Chief Executive of Whizz-Kidz, said: “We’re delighted with today’s announcement; it’s a significant step forward, and will give young disabled people, and their families, freedom of choice and control over their own wheelchair provision.

“We know that the families we work with want choice and flexibility; making Personal Health Budgets available for young people’s wheelchair services makes this a reality. This will, at long last, open the door to truly personalised, holistic support for young disabled people.

On the Maternity Choice and Personalisation Pioneers – the seven pioneers, made up of neighbouring Clinical Commissioning Groups, are:

1. Halton CCG, Liverpool CCG, St. Helen’s CCG, Knowsley CCG, South Sefton CCG, Southport and Formby CCG, Wirral CCG, Warrington CCG, West Lancashire CCG, West Cheshire CCG, South Cheshire CCG
2. Birmingham South Central CCG, Birmingham CrossCity CCG, Solihull CCG
3. Salford CCG, Wigan CCG, Bolton CCG
4. North East Hampshire & Farnham CCG, North Hampshire CCG, West Hampshire CCG, South East Hampshire CCG, Fareham &, Gosport CCG, Southampton CCG, Portsmouth CCG, Isle of Wight CCG
5. Croydon CCG, Kingston CCG, Merton CCG, Richmond CCG, Sutton CCG, Wandsworth CCG
6. Newham CCG, Tower Hamlets CCG, Waltham Forest CCG
7. West Kent CCG , High Weald Lewes and Haven CCG, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust

Pregnant women living within the pioneer areas will be offered a personal budget and will be able to use it to make choices for each of three stages of the pathway – antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care.

This means a woman would have a wider choice of who provides the maternity care she would prefer, such as a birthing pool, specialisation in teenage, older, or first time mothers, or a provider with a good reputation for breastfeeding support.

NHS England and other partners will work with the pioneers to develop and test new approaches which can then be rolled out nationally.

Sarah-Jane Marsh, Chair of the Maternity Transformation Programme Board, said: “This is a significant step in implementing several recommendations from the National Maternity Review. Widening and deepening choices across maternity services will enable women to make informed decisions and choices about the care they receive, that’s right for them. Their work will test ways of improving choice and personalisation for women and contribute to shaping world-class maternity services.”

Baroness Julia Cumberledge, who led NHS England’s independent Maternity Review, said: “Congratulations to the seven pioneers who have seized the moment to demonstrate the worth of Personal Maternity Care Budgets, giving more choice to expectant mothers and their families. By being put in control of where the budget is spent, women will have more power to ensure their decisions for their baby’s birth and care are respected and implemented.”

On the IPC Emerging Framework – the launch of the new framework sets out the changes needed to deliver more joined up health and social care and so enabling patients, carers and families to ‘commission’ their own care through personalised care planning and personal budgets.

Based on learning from the first year of the programme, the framework is key to achieving the aim of making IPC a mainstream model of care for people who would benefit from it by 2020/21. This includes people with multiple long term conditions, people with severe and enduring mental health problems, and children and adults with learning disabilities and autism.

The framework sets out an expanded role for communities and peer support, and an embedded personalised care and support planning approach as central part to the model. Further control will be given to patients and families over decisions made about their care, through the option of a personal health budget.

It means the national roll-out of the IPC programme will now begin, with areas being asked to signal their interest to be “early adopters” of IPC through their Sustainability and Transformation Plans.

There are currently around 7,500 people with a Personal Health Budget and today’s announcement is a big step towards achieving the goal of up to 100,000 people benefitting from the greater control they offer by 2020/21.