Key words and terms

You may hear the following words and terms when discussing personalisation and personalised services:

• Brokerage: support to help you decide how and where to spend your money.
• Direct payment: once the local authority has allocated you a set amount of money, you can choose to receive it yourself as a direct payment.
• Flexible support: any support provided by Mencap will be flexible within local parameters. 
• Individual budget: this is the money an individual is allocated, to allow them to buy their own support. This is sometimes called a ‘personal budget'.
• Person centered approaches: involves the process of listening to people to find out what is important to them. This is also called ‘person centred planning'.
• Personal Adviser (PA): with personalisation, people will make arrangements with private individuals called PAs to provide the support they need.
• Self-directed support: this is the system which allows people to choose their own package of support using their individual budget. We also talk about ‘individual' or ‘tailored' support.