FAQs

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Check out our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) below to see if we can answer your question right here.

What is W.E Care Online?
 

W.E. Care Online looks to remove transactions from frontline staff that detracts from quality time spent on more meaningful face-to-face interactions and support.

This would include transactions such as:

  • wellbeing calls
  • appointment arranging
  • reminders about appointments
  • staff coordination for the day
  • statistical returns to purchasers
  • keeping a tally on hours delivered to people we work for (initial work on delivering individual customer accounts).

What is Personalisation?
 

Personalisation is a process that allows people to choose their support provider or to "self direct" their support package.

It empowers users to make their own choices about when, how and from who they receive support.

This approach is common to most developed European states, where such services have often been implemented through allowing people to hold and spend their own budgets.

What is Self-directed Support?
 

Self-directed Support allows individuals receiving social care or support to work alongside professionals to enhance the quality and delivery of health and social care.

It describes the ways in which individuals and families can have informed choice about the way support is provided to them.

Wheatley Care aims to build a positive, empowering framework for care and support, giving individuals the freedom to direct their own care and support to achieve their own unique support package.

Read more about it – and see how it changes people's lives for the better – at Self-directed Support.

What is an Individual Budget?
 

An indicative or individual budget is a clear, upfront amount of funding from the Local Authority which is made available for anyone who is eligible for social care support, to spend on the equipment and services which are needed in order to live more independently.

It can be used to buy services from both the council and other providers, mixing and matching what’s available from different organisations.

What is a Direct Payment?
 

A Direct Payment is a payment made by a local authority so that a service user can arrange and buy services themselves in order to meet their assessed community care needs or their need for children’s services.

This self-directed care is one way of increasing the flexibility, choice, and control users have over the community care they receive, in order to help them live more independently.

A Social Work department assesses an eligible person’s need for care services, and that person then has the option of becoming responsible for arranging some or all of the care that they need.

Local authorities are obliged to offer direct payments as an alternative to arranging the services themselves, but the service user must only use them to meet their assessed care needs.

What is an Individual Living Fund (ILF)?
 

The Individual Living Fund (ILF) delivers financial support to disabled people and advancing standards of independent living.

The ILF makes payments to disabled people to help them lead a more independent life, but is now permanently closed to new applications.

What is In Control Scotland?
 

In Control Scotland was set up in 2006 to transform the organisation of social care and support in Scotland so that people gain more control over their support and their lives.

Two founding agencies – ALTRUM and the Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability – have worked together to establish In Control in Scotland.

What do you mean by Brokerage?
 

People who are eligible for publicly funded social care are given an upfront allocation of funding (an indicative budget) and they can decide how they will plan for and organise their support, to meet their own personal outcomes.

Brokerage was established to promote individual choice and control and to successfully develop self-directed support for individuals.

Support brokerage is about making sure people and their families who require extra assistance to plan and make choices about support can get it.

A brokerage service is available at a cost, which will be met from the indicative budget, and prices vary.

What is a Welfare Guardian?
 

In Scotland, this term relates to the ‘Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act, 2000'.

By law, if an adult is unable to make a safe decision about his or her own welfare, a court can appoint someone else to make decisions for them. This person is known as a Welfare Guardian.

The Act aims to protect and promote the welfare of adults with a mental illness, learning disability or other mental disorder, including dementia. Guardians can be partners, carers, relatives or social workers.

What is a Financial Guardian?
 

A guardianship order is an appointment by the court once an individual has lost capacity to make decisions, usually by mental or physical illness.

A power of attorney is different from a Financial Guardianship order as it is signed before an individual becomes incapable.

A guardian has legal authority to make decisions over the long term on behalf of an individual in relation to the individual’s financial matters, property, personal welfare or a combination of these.

What is a Local Authority?
 

In Scotland, Local Government is organised in 32 Local Authorities, providing local governance and services such as water and sewerage, roads, social work, police and education.

What is a Care Manager?
 

A Care Manager is an employee of the Local Authority Social Work Department or the Health Board who is entrusted with the responsibility for working on behalf of a child or an adult with assessed needs.

If you receive service at home, particularly if it is more than one type of service, you are likely to be assigned a Care Manager from the social services department.

This may or may not be the same person who carried out your original assessment.

The Care Manager keeps an overall eye on the services you are receiving (sometimes referred to as the ‘package’ of care services) and makes sure they are operating smoothly and are still right for you.

From time to time, the Care Manager will also arrange a formal review of the service arrangement.

What is a Registered Provider?
 

All agencies (or providers) which provide social care services in Scotland (whether belonging to the statutory, voluntary/charitable, or private/non charitable sectors) are required to have their services registered with the Care Inspectorate and and to have members of their workforce professionally registered with the Scottish Social Services Council, or a comparable professional body.

What does the Care Inspectorate do?
 

The Care Inspectorate regulates and inspects care services in Scotland to make sure that they meet the right standards.

It also jointly inspects with other regulators to check how well different organisations in local areas work to support adults and children.

Set up by Scottish Government, and accountable to ministers, it’s the Care Inspectorate's job to assure and protect everyone that uses these services.

What is Assistive Technology?
 

Assistive Technology (AT) is defined as:

"Any item, piece of equipment, product or system, whether acquired commercially, off the shelf, modified or customised, that is used to increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of individuals with cognitive, physical or communication disabilities" – (Marshall, 2000).

This includes traditionally viewed 'high-tech' solutions, such as warden calls, sensors and alert systems, but also more traditional pieces of equipment such as wheelchairs, hearing aids and medication dosing systems.

The use of AT equipment can offer individuals the opportunity to live independently in situations and circumstances where it would have been previously necessary to have assistance and support in the form of personnel.