Self-Directed Support in Scotland for people with mental health problems

The Scottish Parliament has passed a new law on social care support, the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013. The Act came into force on 1 April 2014 and gives people a range of options for how their social care is delivered, beyond just direct payments, empowering people to decide how much on-going control and responsibility they want over their own support arrangements.

One of the gaps that the people involved in Outside the Box's Getting There project identified was that there is relatively little experience of people with mental health problems in Scotland using Direct Payments or other forms of Self-directed support. Similar arrangements have been in place for a few years already in England, and the learning from there could be useful to people in Scotland

To support this, NDTi was commissioned to bring together existing evidence and practice on Self-Directed Support for people with mental health problems.

The work:

• Highlights the difference that Self-Directed Support can and does make for people with mental health problems
• Provides practical examples of how Self-Directed Support for people with mental health problems has worked
• Highlights what needs to be in place to ensure this happens.

You can download the reports and resources from the Getting There website, found here.

You can read an overview presentation of the difference Self-Directed Support makes here: Self-Directed Support in Scotland for people with mental health problems, 1 April 2014 from Rich Watts.