Written answer
Disability Services
2836. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the plan, timeline and cost for the option of personalised budgets for those with disabilities, giving individuals greater choice and control over how they are supported; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [59959/26]
Comment on this
A personalised budget is an amount of funding allocated to an eligible person with a disability to enable them to make their own arrangements to meet specified support needs.
Published in 2018, the report of the Taskforce on Personalised Budgets recommended that the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive should establish demonstration projects to test the delivery of personalised budgets in an Irish context with a view to identifying the best approach for the wider roll-out of the model following the initial demonstration phase.
The Personalised Budget Demonstrator Pilot was launched in August 2019 on a cost-neutral basis, with expressions of interest for participation sought from disabled adults in receipt of HSE funded specialist disability services.
In 2023, responsibility for specialist disability services transferred from the Department of Health to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (now the Department of Children, Disability and Equality), and with it, responsibility for the Personalised Budget Demonstrator Pilot.
The evaluation phase of the Personalised Budgets Demonstrator Pilot was led by the National Disability Authority (NDA), which has produced an evaluation report that is now nearing finalisation. The report sets out key findings from the Pilot, drawing on the experiences of participants, families and other stakeholders.
The final report will form part of the wider evidence base informing the Department's ongoing policy development work on a Policy Framework on Supports for Community Living. The Framework is examining home support and personal assistance within a wider system context and is also considering the appropriate role of personalised budgets within that system. A Technical Group on Supports for Community Living has been established to support this work and comprises people with lived experience, together with representatives of umbrella organisations, service provider representative bodies and the HSE.