Establishing an interagency equipment fund for children with disabilities - electric toothbrush cost

Background over the past 10 years, with advances in computer technology and the application of ergonomic and corrective principles, the complexity of equipment has increased dramatically.
As a result, the potential benefits and costs for children have increased.
Parents become more confident and organizations in the voluntary sector become more effective in putting pressure on statutory bodies.
As a result, there is a growing demand for therapists, pediatricians, social workers, and pedagogy, requiring them to provide appropriate, high-quality equipment for children with disabilities.
The response of the statutory body was characterized by a lack of consensus on the common assessment process and a lack of clarity on the responsibility of the funds.
The barriers to coordinated response are: oas_tag.
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Strict restrictions on the public sector budget on the devolution of budgets for children with disabilities within all these institutions, so that any collective action needs to give priority to a large number of uniform agreements of care fragmentation institutions with different cultural and professional backgrounds between and within different institutions and at all levels of workers within three institutions.
As a result, individual professionals have to use their ingenuity and perseverance in seeking funding.
This includes the need to raise funds from charities, and the need to tailor assessments based on what they know is possible to provide.
At the same time, some unused equipment was "lost" in the school cabinets and shops because there was no
A person knows who owns its location.
The management is not sure which institution is responsible for which type of equipment
For example, a professional seat can be considered a health need, a social need, or an educational need, depending on the circumstances.
In fact, the equipment is rationed by delay.
If the whole process is cruel, it is appropriate to use the word "three-way tramp" to describe the children in the center.
Before 1994, this was the case with the Norfolk area covered by the former Norfolk Health Bureau (about 80% of the county.
Elsewhere in East Anglia, there are also examples of more successful inter-agency work.
In neighboring Suffolk, a group of senior managers from the three agencies processed the equipment requests and are developing a communications assistance assessment center.
In western Norfolk (another health authority), a multi-agency team of professionals manages an equipment fund whose work is the prototype of East Norfolk.
Further obstacles to local multi-agency arrangements by population and administrative boundaries are the overlap of administrative boundaries.
Local authorities responsible for education and social services cover the entire Norfolk County (population, 775000 ).
There are two health departments, one in the West and one in the neighboring cam County.
The total population of health authorities in eastern Norfolk is 620000, of which approximately 6600 are between 0 and 14 years old and have children each year.
7 National Health Services Trust Funds (3 acute, 2 communities, 1 mental health trust fund and 1 Joint trust fund) four of them were also served by the health agency to patients from other health authorities (and counties.
What is even more confusing is that the boundaries and responsibility of health authorities and some trusts have changed before this project, followed by more than one change.
In order to establish a Equipment Fund, a bid of £ 1994 was made to "United Finance.
(Joint financing is a plan implemented by the health authorities to start multi-agency development of pumps.
) The level of unmet equipment needs is unknown and the purpose of the first year is to allow preliminary development work.
This includes criteria for determining which equipment is eligible to be provided, mechanisms for processing applications, and the development of bids for the group's ongoing financing.
In the second year, we again made further bids for the three-year funding through the joint financing plan.
At this time, changes in the NHS border have brought a neighboring trust under the control of the health authorities.
Following some negotiations in the social services and education sectors of the trust, health authorities and local authorities, in order to develop a plan covering the entire area of health authorities, an annual allocation of £ 21 has been made.
The members of the group managing the fund are designed to provide the broadest representation with a minimum number of people.
It includes language therapists, occupational therapists and physical therapists, pediatricians, social workers, and educational psychologists who provide expertise and represent their institutions.
Health professionals were selected, including delegates from each NHS trust.
Hosted by a senior social services manager in charge of the budget.
Funding standards are constantly evolving, and the criteria currently used are shown in Table 1.
The general principle is to fund equipment that meets the needs of different environments, which is not a clear responsibility of one of the statutory bodies.
The requirements for the equipment require the assessment of two professionals, preferably from a different institution, one of whom is usually a therapist.
The group is broad enough to be able to conduct a critical assessment of these requests.
The final decision has always been made on the basis of multi-agency consensus.
Check this table: the process of viewing the inline View pop-up table 1 financing equipment standards to reach this consensus has caused some interesting dilemmas.
The program did not fund equipment such as the Leka body suit, corrective surgery, classroom work keyboards or professional toilets, as they were considered the responsibility of a single agency.
The team also relies heavily on the therapist's expertise and, where possible, on evidence of validity.
As a result, some types of walking aids and AC aids are not funded because they are considered clinically inappropriate or ineffective.
On the other hand, discussions between the group, parents and volunteer organizations resulted in an agreement to supply a stroller as part of a child's bag, such as an autistic person, their actions pose serious operational problems for them and their families.
Before the population needs assessment and assessment of the public health intervention of the schemeA textbook, the population-based needs assessment is performed first, and then the assessment is performed.
In this case, both are incorporated into one work.
The initial £ 21 per year was based on a well-founded Guess of funding needs.
Better evidence is needed to demonstrate the needs of the equipment and the operation of the program to justify recurring funds.
In addition, many of the necessary information that needs to be assessed becomes available due to the operation of the fund.
Therefore, we set up a study to collect and analyze a series of quantitative and qualitative data.
Three Selected findings from the study included the following.
Determining demand is a temporary, arbitrary task.
From a professional and parent perspective, there is always more or better equipment that can help resolve statutory liability and release a lot of worms from a variety of cans!
For example, the health authorities believe that the trust fund is responsible for providing a permanent framework, but none of the NHS trust funds provide budget disability surveys for these trust funds based on data from OPCS (census and survey offices, the therapist's 45 pieces of information on equipment needs, based on the patient register of children aged 0-19 years (I . e. children aged 0-14 years) by the health authorities, we estimate the total annual equipment budget to be GBP, among them, the physical equipment is 1997 and the communication equipment is 50 (pounds ).
This total includes equipment already provided through statutory bodies, so any inference should take into account the existing local funding arrangements.
Data from the fund's five-year operation showed the expenditure of the money (Table 2 ).
The two main expenses are dedicated seating and communication equipment.
The cost of the seat is increasing rapidly, and there are some commercial practices such as preventing the installation of one seat to the seats of other manufacturers.
The spread of AIDS is mainly divided into two categories.
After careful evaluation and evaluation, a small number of complex computer aids were funded.
However, 80% of projects and 10% of communications equipment expenditures are used for low-cost ancillary equipment and accessories.
Other items include a sleep system, a stand-up stand, and even an electric toothbrush (she can't brush her teeth on her own for a muscular child ).
View this table: View the inline View popupTable 2 expenditures of the joint equipment group from September 1994 to July 1999, drawing on five years of experience in running the program. The assessment of the work of the fund helps to ensure that the provision of equipment on a regular basis is now more equitable and responsive to families and users.
However, this can only be achieved after subtle negotiations with each of the three agencies, in which we must simultaneously demonstrate the value of the program, the care of our management, if they do not continue to provide the funds, they will be condemned from the other two.
This assessment also enables us to obtain an additional £ 60 000 in two years dedicated to communications aids, although we will again justify the continued use of this grant.
Despite our plan, there is still a gap in the provision of equipment for children with disabilities.
The management of the budget and the supply of equipment are increasingly complex.
We are also aware that the continued operation of the group depends on the commitment of individual members, none of whom set this out in the "Job Description.
However, the benefits include being able to track the equipment and provide an effective system for recycling unused equipment.
We have begun to rationalize the maintenance of expensive equipment and the insurance system.
We also find that requests for equipment that is clearly in the charge of an agency can be redirected and processed more quickly.
Despite the low cost, the impact and conclusions of multi-agency development are difficult to implement.
While the use of funds is more efficient and may provide overall savings, the financing of these plans is still vulnerable to any constraints on participating institutional budgets, as well as other unrelated inter-agency resource quarrels.
The feasibility of our plan sometimes depends on opportunistic and compromise, although funding agencies are often very supportive.
Ultimately, what convinced all of us of the importance of the program was the parents' response, and they welcomed the removal of bureaucratic barriers to access equipment for their children.
This article is based on the work carried out primarily by Casey Parker and members of the East Norfolk joint equipment group, which is funded by grants from the Norfolk Department of Social Services, and we thank you for that.
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