About personal budgets

A personal budget is a sum of money allocated to you by the Royal Borough of Greenwich to organise your care and support. You'll receive a personal budget following your care assessment and have an agreed support plan.

Your personal budget gives you more flexibility over the services you receive and how you arrange your care.

For further information about receiving a personal budget, contact Adult Social Care.

Spending your money

Provided you spend your personal budget to meet your assessed social care needs, you are able to spend your personal budget on any goods, services or support you may need (with some exceptions).

What you can spend your money on

You can spend your budget in any way, within reason, that meets your needs and outcomes that we identified in your assessment. For example, you could hire:

  • a personal assistant - these are people you choose to support you. They can help you at home or in the community in the way you choose
  • community support - think about what your friends, family and neighbours can do and use your money to pay expenses or reward them in other ways
  • live-in support - find someone to live with you, who can offer you help as well, in exchange for free accommodation for example.

What you can't spend your money on

Remember, we designed your personal budget to meet your social care needs, so there are some things you can't spend it on. You are not allowed to pay for:

  • services that are not related to your support plan or assessment
  • long-term residential or nursing care
  • anything that makes life worse for you, or places you at unacceptable risk
  • anything illegal, including drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, or paying people 'cash in hand'
  • employing family members who already live with you (except in exceptional circumstances)
  • household bills, clothes, food, paying off debt, or anything not related to your social care needs
  • things not value for money, because there are more cost effective options
  • services the National Health Service (NHS) should provide, such as physiotherapy.

You should not need to use your budget to buy daily living equipment as we may loan suitable items to you, or provide free on prescription. Your budget is also not designed to pay for adaptations to your home.

Managing your personal budget

You are able to receive and spend your budget in many different ways to pay for the services and support you need.

  • Direct Payments give you the greatest amount of choice and control over your services. You can manage the money yourself, or you can have someone your trust manage it for you. We can also manage the money on your behalf, and help you with arranging any support.
  • If you do not want to have this degree of control over your services, then we can also set up services for you. This is how services were arranged before, and offers the least amount of flexibility over your service
  • In a combination of the ways described above.

We will not agree your plan if your services cost more than is allocated in your personal budget. You can also 'top up' your personal budget if you wish.