The Individual Budgets project was far reaching and covered a wide range of people with different needs.

It was also of interest to many different organisations, and it was important we listened to their views. Some of those organisations included:

• Ones that represented people who use services, like older people or disabled people
  
• Ones that represented social care staff
  
• Ones that provided services to people.

How we got people involved

We asked all 13 of our pilot sites to make sure they involved their local stakeholders in their projects.

This included voluntary organisations, providers of services, and local people.

We worked with the pilot sites to make sure they could do that, and supported them where necessary.

What happened nationally?

It is important that stakeholders were involved in central policy development.

We formed an Individual Budgets Reference Group that met regularly to discuss what happened in the pilots.

This group will helped us to get messages about Individual Budgets out to other stakeholders.

We also have two sub groups which are made up of organisations with a user-focus and a provider-focus.

If you think that you should be involved, or would like us to pass a message on to one of our pilot sites, please contact us.

Copyright CSIP 2006