Other bodies regulate fostering. Carers are subject to a thorough assessment process to ensure their suitability to foster children and receive training, monitoring and supervision. For this reason, HSE would not generally regulate foster care.:

A personal health budget uses NHS funding to create an individually agreed personalised care and support plan, that offers people of all ages greater choice and flexibility over how their assessed health and wellbeing needs are met.

The personalised care and support planning conversation identifies the care, support and services the personal health budget will be spent on. This can include a range of things to give people access to care, support and services that are holistic, innovative and build on their strengths.

Key points:

• personal health budgets enable people to have choice and control over decisions about their care and the budget that is available to meet their needs
• personal health budgets can be managed in different ways. No one will ever be expected to have more choice and control than they feel comfortable with
• the NHS should work in partnership with the individual and agree together the outcomes to be achieved and set these out in a personalised care and support plan
• all personal health budgets must be agreed and signed off by the person’s NHS team, and where necessary the local integrated care board (ICB).