DCIL Direct Payments and Independent Living
Independent living means enabling disabled people to have the same rights and opportunities as non-disabled people - regardless of age, impairment or where they live. Independence is not about disabled people doing everything for themselves. Nobody does that. It is about having choices about what happens to you.
What are Direct Payments?
Direct payments are an important way of helping you to continue to live independently in your own home by using cash payments from the social services department to buy the support you want and need. Direct Payments aid independent living as you are given the money as opposed to having a care service arranged for you. This enables you to get more personalised support. Flexibility is a major advantage of direct payments as you can decide only to get direct payments for part of your support when you may be happy with arrangements made by social services for some of your support. Direct payments don't affect your benefits and are completely optional.
What support can DCIL provide?
Personal assistance is an important part of independent living for disabled people who need help with certain aspects of life. The DCIL provides payroll services to these individual disabled people.
DCIL Payroll Service
The provision of payroll services for personal assistance workers through the through Independent Living Fund (ILF), Direct Payments or other schemes for disabled people. Payroll services are also available to other voluntary organisations at competitive rates. In fact the DCIL provides payroll support to over 40 organisations and more than 350 individual disabled people. (August 2006)