BetterCare Account
A digital budget and care account platform
WHAT IS BETTERCARE ACCOUNT?
BetterCare Account is a digital platform, designed for staff to automate the production of an individuals’ personal budget and for citizens to self-serve & track their budget through their care account. Co-designed by four local authorities, with input from a ‘gallery’ of 50 other councils, this service has undergone extensive collaboration from inception to development. It offers a range of features that act as a ‘self-service’ platform, aiming to reduce pressure on local authorities. BetterCare Account provides a user-friendly front end to anyone accessing care through their local authority, ensuring transparency and empowering them to self-serve their needs.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Individuals can calculate their personal budget
Users can evidence and track their spend
Needs can be reassessed at any time
Adjustments available on request
Ability to generate statements
Care professionals can establish what the user’s eligible care needs are by reviewing the output of a user’s care and support assessment (CSA)
National standardised set of services to select fromÂ
Bespoke packages of care to meet the individual’s eligible care needs
Associated costs of this package can be generated by automatically calculating the user’s personal budget with localised costs
Capacity for ad hoc adjustments to be made to a user’s personal budget
Professionals can take account of a user’s maximum contribution as assessed during a financial assessment, leading to a metered rate
BUSINESS CASE
The DHSC Impact Assessment has estimated that 80% of eligible self-funders will come forward each year to be assessed for their care and support needs. Via a number of early market scoping sessions, local authorities told us they will struggle with the significant increase in demand from service users who, under current legislation, don’t typically approach their council for assistance.
Utilising the BetterCare digital self-service care and support assessment platform to enable a self-funder to generate and track their independent personal budget will provide councils with significant efficiency savings and mean that this new approach will be digital by default and digital from the start. Not only by reducing the need for individuals to visit their council or for practitioners to make home visits, but also to ensure that IPB backlogs don’t build up and there is a smooth transition when a service user reaches their care cost cap.
This self-service approach will empower self-funders and support the workforce at a time of significant business process change, giving service users effective tools to determine their independent personal budget, and staff a system to identify and prioritise any cases requiring additional risk-based intervention.
CO-FUNDERS
   
