What is more telling. Is that the money for the personal budgets is going to come from the exact same pot that has been removed from the day services. At a previous meeting I have attended it was found that there was a plan for a project in the future; for a day service if enough people decided they wanted to spend their personal budget on such a thing. At that point it started sounding like a crazy new take on a pyramid scheme to myself.
Personal budgets for mental health will only be given to those deemed qualified for care by the local services. Which have a 'critical' care criteria. Which essentially means people only qualify for a brief period (say max 6 weeks) during a crisis and are then kicked back out to fend for themselves. Resulting in very, very few who will ever qualify for a personal budget for more than a few weeks at a time. Definitely not providing the sort of stability and numbers you would need to fund a day service.
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