'A personal budget is an amount of money identified by the local authority to deliver all or some of the provision set out in an EHC plan. By having a say in the way this budget is used, a parent or young person can control elements of their support'  – Children and Families Act 2014.

Personal budgets should be seen as an integral part of the coordinated assessment and EHC planning process. Pathfinder learning has demonstrated that a personal budget is one of a number of ways to achieve increased personalisation of services for children and young people.

Version 6 (March 2015) of the Personal Budgets information pack has been updated and draws together a number of helpful resources, case studies and learning from implementation of the SEND reforms to date. Version 3 published in December 2013, version 4 published in April 2014 and version 5 published in October 2014 is also available.

Information Packs

Other Resources

Individual Budget (IB) Pilot Programme for families with disabled children: This evaluation report provides good practice examples of the infrastructure necessary to support the delivery of personal budgets. The suite of Final Evaluation Reports for the original two year Pilot Programme can be found on the DfE website by clicking here.

Personal health budgets (PHB) programme: This evaluation report shows that personal health budgets work best where individuals have flexibility around what they can use them for and how they are managed. A practical toolkit has also been published which includes information on budget setting, support and different ways of managing budgets.

• The Personal Health Budgets Evaluation Reports can be found by clicking here.
• The Personal Health Budgets Practical Toolkit can be accessed by clicking here.