Personal budgets as a solution for all? The case of adults with disabilities in a vulnerable situation.

From a public administration perspective personal budget schemes can be considered as cases of very well pre-structured systems that are assumed to be fit to answer care and support needs for the largest variety of eligible clients. The aim of our research is to test whether such systems really fulfil their promise when applied to vulnerable people with a disability that live in a context of abuse and neglect. This paper draws on data from a study of the implementation of personal budget policy in Flanders (Belgium). We organized focus group with professionals involved in the system, in order to identify (a) the risks for the client and (b) how these risks can be attributed to the managerial nature of the system. We found that in our case, vulnerable clients face several risks throughout the process to obtain a personal budgets and that the procedure doesn’t seem to be fit for purpose for these clients. For example, some clients with urgent support needs risk ending up without any solution due to strict criteria. We also found that these risks can be attributed to the design of the system. More specific, we found an interference between personal budget policy for people with disabilities and adjoining policy fields; between the regular personal budget policy and the specific priority procedure targeting people in a context of abuse and neglect and finally we also identified boundaries related to the organizational and regulatory framework of the policy targeting vulnerable adults with a disability