Needing more detail to establish the new level of need

When carrying out a review and a change is reported, you might need more detail to establish the individual’s new level of entitlement.

You should choose either of the options below:

• Contact the individual to ask follow-up questions. Here, you must ensure that this phone call does not become, or feel to the individual, like a consultation. There are no client consultations within PADP. For more details, see operational guidance on contacting individuals with follow-up questions. You should also consider that individuals in receipt of PADP may struggle to see that their level of need has increased. If you suspect that this might be the case, you should use appropriate decision-making tools (such as requesting supporting information from the client’s wider support network). You should be contacting the individual’s client representative for more information, where applicable.
• Choose the decision-making tool that is most appropriate and most likely to provide the information you need.

There are a number of decision-making tools for you to use:

• Guidance, such as the Decision-Making Guidance, Operational Guidance, Medical Guidance
• Case discussion
• Requesting supporting information.

For more detail on choosing the correct decision-making tool consult the Principles of Decision-Making chapter.

When establishing the individual’s level of need, supporting information:

• is just one of several decision-making tools
• should not be the default step to take.

Rather, you should choose the action based on what’s most appropriate in the review at hand. As part of that consideration, you should consider what’s best for the individual. For example, a quick phone call to the individual to ask a follow-up question might be better than the individual having to:

• collect supporting information from their wider support network
• wait a number of weeks until the request for supporting information has been answered by the contact the individual has provided.

If you decide that gathering supporting information is the most appropriate decision making tool, you need to decide which source would be best placed to provide the information you need. This can be a professional or a member of the individual’s wider support network. Crucially, requesting supporting information should be done with the goal to more fully understand the individual’s new level of needs. The aim here is not to “verify” what the individual has told us.