Over the last year, peoplehub has evolved and refocused our energy and commitment to the work that we do. With our renewed purpose we aim to reach more people with lived experience and find ways, with them, to make useful change happen.

We recognise that many people with long term health conditions and disabilities don’t have the same choices and opportunities in life that others take for granted. We are committed to creating new ways to invest in people with lived experience in order that they have more power and control in their daily lives.

We’ve created this new website to reflect our renewed purpose. You’ll find fresh information guides on personal health budgets, and brand-new original graphics about co-production. Our Facebook community continues to grow and provides a valuable place for people to connect. We have some exciting projects in progress and more content to follow – so watch this space!

March 2021

The new NHS England Personalised Care Peer Leadership Development Programme is now open for enrolment!

Following the success of the peoplehub and NHS England Peer Leadership Academies over the last 6 years, this new online programme is an exciting next step in Peer Leadership in personalised care.

This free online programme is led by people with lived experience of personalised care, and is mainly aimed at people who could benefit from personalised care, for example: disabled people, people who have a long-term health condition and/or their family carer. Peoplehub co-wrote the programme, with NHS England, the Personalised Care Strategic Co-production Group and others.

The journey to becoming a Peer Leader often begins with wanting to improve your own situation. So, the programme starts with ‘What is personalised care and how can people in England benefit’? It is delivered by NHS England in partnership with Future Learn, an accessible learning platform, and features real-life stories, group discussions and quizzes to mark progress.

To enrol on the Step One course please register here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/peer-leadership-foundation-step-1

To request a course booklet, please email: england.pldp@nhs.net

October 2020

‘What matters to you?’ day started in 2014 with the aim of encouraging and supporting more meaningful conversations between health and care staff, and individuals and their families.

It’s about shifting the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What’s important to you?”. It asks more health and care staff to talk to the people they work with, find out what matters to them, and how they would like to be supported.

This is part of the conversation at the heart of good personalised care and support planning, personal health budgets, and personalised care, and are such important conversations to have, and to have well.

Our video is to help to encourage more people to start having these conversations.

June 2020

Rita Brewis, co-founder of Peoplehub, had a unique opportunity to tell Princess Anne about the benefits of personal health budgets at an event hosted by the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Rita has been working with the organisation to help train their volunteer coordinators whose role will include sharing information about personal health budgets with their members.

June 2015

The Department of Health has announced it will give all recipients of continuing healthcare the ‘right to have’ a personal health budget. This amendment to secondary legislation extends the current policy which will give people the ‘right to ask’ for a personal health budget.

Here is the full ministerial announcement:

“The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb): In October 2011, the Government announced that people receiving NHS continuing health care (NHS CHC) would have the ‘right to ask’ for a personal health budget (PHB), including a direct payment, subject to the results of the PHB pilot programme. This commitment was confirmed in November 2012, following the publication of the independent evaluation of the pilot programme.

This ‘right to ask’ for a PHB will be enshrined in secondary legislation and will take effect in April 2014. These amendments make it clear that clinical commissioning groups will need to develop the capacity and capability to deliver PHBs, as it imposes an obligation to give serious consideration to requests for PHBs. The ‘right to ask’ for a PHB is not the same though as an automatic entitlement to a PHB. There will be some people for whom a PHB is not appropriate because, for example, their existing package of care is the best way of managing their needs.

I am today announcing to the House that the position is to be strengthened for those groups who gain the ‘right to ask’ for a PHB in April 2014, as from October 2014 this group will further be given the ‘right to have’ a PHB. A ‘right to have’ will guarantee that people in receipt of NHS CHC and those transitioning in from social care or children’s services will have continuity of care in the services they receive. Those already on NHS CHC will be able to continue to access the services they are familiar with as they will be in control of how their budget is spent and have the confidence to exercise choice. Similarly, those who are new to NHS CHC, those who transition in from social care budgets or those who transition from children’s services will be able to continue to access the services they are accustomed to without the fear that this power to choose will be taken away from them when they move to a new package of care. There will continue to be people for whom PHBs are not appropriate but by giving a ‘right to have’ we will ensure that they will only be declined on clinical or financial grounds which are deemed to make a PHB unviable.

I believe that this policy will ensure stability and continuity for those who need it most and go further towards our goal of providing greater personalisation within our NHS.”

October 2013