About Self Directed Support

What is Self-directed Support?

Public services are faced with major demographic changes, a challenging financial climate and new, higher expectations about citizen choice, control and responsibility. Old models of service provision are no longer sustainable and more of the same will not do.

Self-directed support empowers people to direct their own care and support and to have informed choice about how their support is provided. There are a range of mechanisms available to people to direct their support.

One way is taking a direct payment. This is when a local authority makes a payment direct to the citizen in place of services that otherwise would have been arranged by the authority.

Alternatively, a person can direct the available budget without actually taking the payment direct. This is sometimes called an individual budget or individual service fund.

Flexibility, choice and control

But self-directed support is about more than one particular mechanism - it is about the citizen making an informed choice and deciding how much ongoing control they wish to have.

The Scottish Government and the Convention for Scottish Local Authorities have produced a National Strategy on Self-directed Support [PDF - 800Kb] which provides a 10 year vision to drive a cultural shift around the delivery of support that views people as equal citizens with rights and responsibilities.

The Scottish Government has also been working on a Self-directed Support Bill which aims to underpin the strategy by enshrining choice and control for the citizen.