Mr. Brian Higgins:

In the context of the brokerage model, for a number of years we have been operating a demonstrator project for personalised budgets. Within that, there was intended to be three different models that we would test. There was a personal managed fund. There was a co-managed fund, which is the one the Senator referred to, with the providers and the individual. The third was the broker-managed fund. What is evident at this stage is that the broker-managed fund has never actually come into play. That is due partly to the timeframe that Covid took from the project and a number of other issues, but it certainly is an identified challenge for people who are interested in joining the personalised budget demonstrator and those who are already on the programme.

The intention behind the demonstrator is really to prove concept, and what we are discovering is that it is working. There are circa 40 people currently living with personalised budgets and the independence that it brings, and there are a number, we would hope in and around the region of 40, that we might be able to move into the stage 4 full independent living. It is interesting that the target originally was that we would have 180 people living with personalised budgets by the end of the demonstrator. We have had much bigger numbers than the 180 who have taken part, many of whom have exited the programme. That is partly due to some of the complexities where a budget has to be uncoupled from a CHO area to be applied to the individual and in many cases, because of the length of time that that person has been in service, the budget does not represent the needs that the person would have independently. There is a major lesson that we want to glean from that and to address. It certainly is something that we want to look at and address moving forward, and evaluate what our learning needs to be from the disabled people themselves who sought to enter and who entered the programme.