NHS Warwickshire - West Midlands SHA

Key focus/scope

The pilot is a partnership between NHS Warwickshire, Warwickshire County Council and Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust. It will focus on mental health and learning disabilities, including: rehabilitation of people with severe and enduring mental illness; people with mental health issues who are being considered for continuing health care, and people with learning disabilities.

Overview of pilot and its purpose

The pilot aims to use personal health budgets to tailor rehabilitation support for people with severe and enduring mental illness, so they can move into community-based settings and have more independence, reduced relapses during rehabilitation and less need for acute intervention.

The pilot will also look to offer budgets to people who are being considered for continuing health care. This will enable a comparison of traditional methods of continuing care with care provided through a personal health budget, with respect to improving quality of life and also costs involved.

Thirdly, the pilot will use personal health budgets to help people with learning disabilities develop and maintain independence, drawing on learning from successful and mature pilots.

Each group will involve less than 20 people, so that processes and obstacles can be worked through on an individual basis.

Objectives of pilot

The pilot aims to:

• provide appropriate rehabilitation services for people with severe and enduring mental illness by enabling people and staff to be more creative in their thinking around this area
• give the people involved greater choice and control in how they wish to be supported
• enable more independent living, and subsequently decrease admissions to inpatient services
• evaluate current service provision alongside personal health budgets in terms of quality and cost.

This information has been provided by NHS Warwickshire.