The questions people actually ask us.

A Direct Payment is money paid to you, usually by your local authority, so you can arrange the support that has been agreed in your care and support plan instead of the council arranging it for you.

It is not extra income and it is not a grant to spend freely. It is public funding for agreed support, and it has to be used for that. What it buys you is choice: over who supports you, when, and sometimes how.

Read the full guide to Direct Payments

A Personal Health Budget is an amount of NHS funding agreed for a person’s health and wellbeing needs, planned together with the NHS. It is used to meet needs the NHS has agreed to fund, set out in a personalised care and support plan.

Depending on the arrangement, it may be held by the NHS, held by a third party, or taken as a direct payment for healthcare. Availability and the way it works vary, and eligibility is decided by the NHS rather than by us.

Read the full guide to Personal Health Budgets

A Personal Assistant, usually shortened to PA, is someone employed directly by you — or by the person you care for — to provide agreed support. That might be personal care, help getting out, support at work or college, help around the house, or being alongside someone so they can live the life they want.

The important difference from agency care is the employment relationship. Because you are the employer, you choose who it is, and the support is built around one person rather than a rota.

Read the full guide to Personal Assistants

The principle is simple: support should be shaped around the person receiving it, with that person having a real say in how it is arranged. In practice it usually means an assessment, an agreed plan, and then a choice about how the agreed support is delivered.

Personalised care is an approach rather than a single scheme. Direct Payments and Personal Health Budgets are two of the mechanisms that make it possible.

Your local authority decides eligibility for funded social care support. Where the NHS is involved, the relevant NHS body decides. They assess your needs and decide what will be funded.

Oakline has no part in that decision. We cannot influence it, speed it up, guarantee an outcome or appeal it as your advocate. Any organisation suggesting otherwise is overstating what it can do.

No. We cannot obtain funding for you, promise an amount or estimate what you will be awarded. Circumstances vary enormously and the decision is not ours.

What we can do is explain how the process usually works, help you prepare for an assessment, and then take on the practical work once a decision has been made.

You will be told what has been agreed, how the funding will be provided, and what conditions apply. At that point there are usually decisions to make about how support is arranged, and administration to set up.

This is where most people ask us to step in: going through what has been agreed, setting up payroll and employment paperwork, and recruiting if someone needs to be employed.

Only for the support set out in your agreed plan, and in line with any conditions attached. Typically that covers paying a Personal Assistant, buying support from a care provider, and sometimes related employment costs such as employer’s National Insurance, insurance or payroll support.

If you are unsure whether something is allowed, ask your council or NHS contact before committing to it. Funding must be used according to the approved arrangement.

Yes. The person holding a Direct Payment is normally accountable for showing that it has been used for the agreed purpose, and there will usually be periodic reviews or audits.

Keeping proper records is one of the main reasons people use us. Good records make a review a short conversation instead of a stressful one.

If you employ a Personal Assistant, yes. You decide who to interview and who to appoint. We find and check candidates; the choice is yours and we will not make it for you.

If your support comes from an agency, you have less say over individual staff, although you can normally discuss preferences and continuity with the provider.

Sometimes, but it is not automatic and it is not a given. It depends on the rules that apply to your arrangement and on whether the funding body has agreed to it. Councils and NHS bodies approach this differently, and conditions are often attached — particularly where the relative lives in the same household.

We can explain how the question is normally approached and what to ask, but the decision belongs to the body funding your support.

Read more about paying a family member

Very often, yes, and this is extremely common. Where the person receiving support is happy for a relative to act on their behalf, we work with that relative directly and keep everything in one place.

Where someone lacks the capacity to make a particular decision, there are formal arrangements that may need to be in place. We will flag when that looks relevant and point you to appropriate advice.

It depends on how much control you want and how much responsibility you are willing to hold. Employing a PA gives continuity and flexibility but makes you an employer. Using a provider means less admin but less say over who turns up.

Plenty of people do both — a PA for most of the week and an agency for weekends or cover.

We have compared the two properly here

In three broad ways, and you can use one or all of them:

• Understanding. Explaining how personalised care, Direct Payments and Personal Health Budgets work, and what your options are.
• Recruitment. Finding, checking and helping you select a Personal Assistant, and recruiting again when one leaves.
• Administration. Payroll, contracts, employment records, training coordination and keeping everything straight for reviews.

Yes. We design the role around the support genuinely needed, advertise it, sift applications, arrange interviews and run pre-employment checks including right-to-work and DBS coordination where they apply.

You meet the shortlist and make the appointment. We do not guarantee that a suitable candidate will be found, because that depends on who is looking for work at the time, but we will tell you honestly what is realistic before you start.

Yes, and for many families this is the most valuable part. Payroll covers payslips, PAYE, National Insurance, statutory sick and holiday pay and workplace pension duties. Employment support covers contracts, terms, records and the questions that come up along the way.

We also arrange training a Personal Assistant needs for the support you receive, and keep a record of what has been completed and when it needs refreshing.

More on how payroll works

No. Oakline is not registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide regulated personal care, and does not provide it. Our personalised care service is administrative and employment support around your arrangement.

The care itself is delivered by the Personal Assistant you employ, or by a registered provider if you commission one. We are developing a home care division for the future, and we will only advertise it once the appropriate registration is in place.

The first conversation is free. It exists so we can both work out whether Oakline can actually help, and you are not committed to anything by having it.

Everything after that is chargeable. Before you commit, you get the cost in writing — what we would do, what it covers and what it would cost — so you can compare it, take it away, show it to someone else, or decline it. We do not start chargeable work on the strength of a phone call.

Some support plans include an allowance for administrative help such as payroll. Whether that allowance exists, and whether it can be used to pay a fee like ours, depends on the funding arrangement you actually hold and the conditions your local authority or NHS body attached to it. We will tell you what we think is likely, but the decision is theirs, not ours, and we would rather you checked than assumed.

Not for a first conversation, and not through the website. We ask about health or care needs only where it is genuinely necessary for something specific — most often to describe a Personal Assistant role accurately — and only with your agreement.

Please do not send diagnoses, care plans or medical records through our forms.

How we handle your information

We start recruiting a replacement as soon as you tell us, usually during the notice period so the gap is as short as possible, and we handle the leaver administration — final pay, outstanding holiday, records and references.

What cover is possible during a gap depends on what your arrangement allows. We will go through the realistic options rather than promise something that is not available.

Paid annual leave and statutory sick pay are part of being an employer, and they need planning for rather than reacting to. We help you build cover into the arrangement where your plan allows it — that might be a second PA for a few hours, or an agreed arrangement with a provider.

It is one of the harder parts of being an employer, and doing it properly protects you. We will talk you through the process, the notice position and the paperwork, and help you handle the conversation fairly.

Where a situation raises genuine legal complexity, we will tell you that you need employment law advice rather than pretending otherwise.

Raise it early. If the person is employed through an arrangement we support, talk to us and we will help you address it properly.

If you believe someone is at risk of harm, that is a safeguarding matter and should go to your local authority safeguarding team without delay. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999. We will always support a concern being escalated rather than kept quiet.

That is the most common way people arrive here, and it is not a reflection on you. The system is genuinely complicated.

Start with one conversation. You do not need paperwork, terminology or a plan — just a rough description of what is happening. Most people find that a single call moves them further than a week of searching.