The Centre provides consultancy to support providers, voluntary organizations, clinical groups, and local authorities to improve services for citizens. It has expertise in areas like co-production, commissioning, training, engagement, consultation, coaching, evaluations, and culture change. The Centre aims to help organizations further self-directed support through practical advice based on the collective skills and experiences of its team members.

1. Personal Budgets – a focus on Third
Party and Individual Service Funds

2. Consultancy
The Centre provides practical assistance, training and
consultancy to a whole range of organisations including:
support providers, voluntary and community sector
organisations; clinical commissioning groups; local
authorities and others who aspire to make radical change
for the benefit of citizens.
The collective knowledge, skills and experience of the
Centre means that we are able to provide practical advice
and support on a whole range of issues.

3. We support with:
• Co-production & visioning
• Commissioning support
• Training
• Market engagement
• Stakeholder consultation
• Coaching & mentoring
• Evaluations
• Culture Change
Furthering Self-Directed Support

4. • Spent early career as a support worker for older people and adults with learning
disabilities
• Spent time working in local authority managing innovation grants and improving
local care and support services for adults with learning disabilities
• Worked on hospital closure programme moving 154 people into their own homes
in local communities
• Lead on Dorset Transforming Care programme and the Autism and Learning
Disability partnership boards
• Set up a council Individual Service Funds offer in 2015
• Now have own company that works with local authorities and CCG’s to improve
access to personal budgets
• Run a ‘Community Micro Enterprise’ in Dorset supporting people with learning
disabilities, autism and people with mental health issues (ThreeSixty Inclusive)
• Associate consultant with PeopleToo and the Institute of Public Care at Oxford
Brookes University
Linkedin CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-watson-frsa-10268a22/
About me

5. From passive recipients to
empowered citizen’s
© Simon Duffy

6. Everyone has gifts, talents and
can contribute
© Simon Duffy

7. Setting up traditional ‘support packages’

8. Personal Budgets – the choices
people should have locally

9. Underpinning Legislation

10. The problems with commissioning ‘for’

11. A simple way to unlock more flexibility – Individual Service
Funds and Third Party NHS Budgets
• Assessment and support plan
details who the person would like to
hold their ISF
• Agreement between the funder and
the ISF holding organisation
• Agreement between the person and
their ISF holding organisation
setting out how they will work
together to use their budget
© Self-Directed Futures

12. Moving from ‘support provider’
to ‘support broker’
© Imagineer and National Brokerage Network

13. So why are they important?
• Place choice, control and power with people and
families over their support arrangement
• ASCOF in 2018 on average 71.5% of people in England
still have a council commissioned service
• There are often better ways to meet outcomes than just
using paid supports – ISFs allow creativity and
innovation to blossom
• Nearly all the benefits of Direct Payments but without the
administrative burden of being an employer
• Providers can make adjustments to day to day support
without having to go back to social work teams or
commissioners (as long as it meets outcomes)
• Current contracts are mainly inflexible – they are also
wasteful

14. https://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/uploads/attachment/427/individual-service-funds.pdf
Individual Service Funds – Learning from Inclusions 18
years of practice (Simon Duffy, 2014)
Link:

15. Family perspective

16. Flexibility vs Inflexibility

17. Market Shaping for community led
support
© TLAP
• Information & advocacy
• Socialising and fun
• Friendship and befriending
• Help in the home or garden
• Personal care
• Creative activities
• Sports and leisure

18. Transforming Care in Wiltshire
• Built a lifeplan with person and family
• ISF set at current ATU weekly cost (at start)
• Teams of PA’s (£27k ish) employed by provider organisation
• Rent cost subsidised by ISF – long term housing will be
purchased
• Profit lines separated into a percentage – not linked to hours
(anticipate reducing paid support as community life grows)
• ISF coordinator role in place
• Training by Studio 3 and LTF – paid by ISF
• 18 months of ongoing input by LTF to support settling in
• 1 person stuck in ATU’s for 8 years – has moved after just 8
months!
• Process led by person and family not procurement and
frameworks

19. Using Third Party NHS budgets to
support people out of hospital

20. Expanding personalisation (new models of
care & commissioning)
✅ Essex County Council
✅ Bristol City Council
✅ Norfolk County Council
✅ Dorset Council
✅ Somerset County Council
✅ Luton Council
✅ Warwickshire County Council
✅ Wiltshire CCG
In conversations with:
✅ Cambridgshire County Council
✅ Dudley MBC
✅ Sheffield City Council © Self-Directed Futures

21. Progress
https://citizen-network.org/resources/map-of-isfs-in-england.html

22. Further Reading
https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/D
ocuments/Events/ISF-events/IPC-
DCC-Individual-Service-Funds-
evaluation-report.pdf
https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Docume
nts/Leadership-and-
management/ISFguide/Individual-Service-
Funds-guide-Aug2020.pdf

23. Further Reading

24. https://citizen-
network.org/resources/
selfdirected-support-
network.html

25. Q&A

26. Contact Us
Chris Watson, Self-Directed Futures/Centre for
Welfare Reform
chris.watson@cforwr.org
or
Chris.watson@selfdirectedfutures.co.uk