Individualised Funding (IF) gives disabled people more choice in how they are supported. It is available throughout New Zealand for eligible people who have either:

Home and Community Support Services, which include help with household management and personal care, Respite services, which include Facility Based Respite, Carer Support and In-home Support.

IF increases your choice and control about who provides this support, and how and when you use it. Your options range from engaging support workers and planning how to use your supports, to employing your own care providers and managing all aspects of service delivery.

IF Host Providers in Auckland

Access
Care on Call
Enliven (Presbyterian Support Northern)
Geneva Healthcare
Healthcare NZ
Lifewise
Manawanui InCharge
Vision West

You can use Individualised Funding to:

• Purchase household management and personal care provided by support workers (where your employees can include family members, contracted personnel or organisations) and pay costs relating to the employment of support workers
• Purchase Respite through support workers or other suitable alternatives so that the full-time carer can have a break (including school holiday programmes or facilities). You cannot use IF to pay parents and spouses for respite care.

You can continue to spend your IF on any disability support or service that:

• Helps you to live your life or makes your life better, and
• Gives you a break from caring for your family member with a disability, or to provide a break for the disabled person, and
• The use of funding if it is reasonable and cost-effective, and
• Not funded through other funding options such as a Disability Allowance. You can find out about what is reasonable for you to buy and you can find out more information at What People Can Buy with Disability Funding: Ministry of Health Purchasing Guidelines.

You cannot use your IF for the following:

• Paying family carers who are either a family member living with a disabled person or a parent or a spouse;
  illegal activities, gambling or alcohol; or
• To pay for things that are not disability supports like rent/mortgage, food, personal debt, gifts, power, regular household items etc.

IF doesn’t cover costs related to medical supplies, equipment, home renovations, leisure, recreation and personal or family costs. You also can’t use it to increase the personal income of an individual or family.

You can only pay a resident family member to provide household management, and personal care supports for those disabled people assessed as having ‘high’ or ‘very high’ needs. You cannot pay resident family members to provide respite.

As it is up to you to choose what support or services to buy, it’s your responsibility to make sure that the support or service meets the Purchasing Guidelines. Your Host can help you with this.

IF Hosts
If you want to use IF to manage your support allocations, you must do this through an IF Host organisation. These are organisations that the Ministry of Health contracts to support people using IF.

Your IF Host:

• helps you understand IF
• helps you learn how to organise, set up and manage your supports
• administers payments for the support services
• helps you manage your responsibilities – this includes reporting back to them on the support hours you have used, so that they can be paid for
• can advise you if something that you want to purchase meets the Purchasing Guidelines.

Your IF Host must also check that the service is working well and report back to the Ministry about it.

If you want your IF Host to be responsible for recruiting, training and paying your support workers and possibly managing the legal aspects of your service, your IF Host may do so for an extra fee that they set and you pay.

Click here for the information on the Ministry of Health website