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Councils will face an increased focus on direct payments in their performance assessment after new figures revealed poor uptake of the scheme, writes Amy Taylor.

A spokesperson for the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which carried out the research, said the commission would be keeping a closer eye on councils with poor records on direct payments than they had in the past.

Community care minister Stephen Ladyman recently raised the idea of making direct payments compulsory so they would become the only way councils could provide people with care.

Direct payments are already a key performance indicator, but many councils are still failing to offer access to the scheme to high numbers of services users.

The report states that fewer than 13,000 people currently use direct payments in England, despite councils spending more than £10bn each year providing social services to hundreds of thousands of people.

The report finds that barriers limiting take up and inhibiting the use of direct payments include a lack of information on the scheme and poor staff awareness of it as an option.

It also cites as further barriers patronising or restrictive attitudes towards people who might want to use direct payments and an unwillingness to devolve power from professionals to individuals.

David Congdon, head of external relations at Mencap, said that he would support an increased focus on direct payments from the commission.

“Many social services departments take the view that people with a learning difficulty won’t be able to manage direct payments, but this is quite wrong,” he said. “The number benefiting with a learning difficulty are, frankly, derisory.”

A spokesperson for Northamptonshire Council, which makes direct payments to just 85 people, said that the council was launching a high profile campaign in September to inform people about the scheme.

Leicestershire Council, which has 142 people on the scheme, said it had appointed a dedicated project officer to work on an action plan to develop the scheme across the council.
 
Essex Council, which provides around 876 people with direct payments, attributed its higher uptake to developing one generic scheme for everyone, and to its independent advocacy scheme and support scheme run by people with disabilities.

N Direct Payments: What are the barriers? from www.csci.org.uk