Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to support personal budgets which integrate health and social care funding.

As part of the commitment to increasing the number of people with a personal health budget, a joint NHS England and local authority led programme, Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme, is underway to explore how to bring together an individual’s health and social care funding, and give them more control over how this money is used through person-centred care planning and integrated personal budgets.

Robust monitoring and measurement of the effectiveness of personal health budgets and integrated budgets is essential. NHS England has supported clinical commissioning groups to use the Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool and is currently exploring how best to monitor quality in future. In addition, NHS England and the Department have commissioned a formal evaluation of the Integrated Personal Commissioning Programme which will report in Spring 2019. This will include considering how to design and measure joint health and social care outcomes.