Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people aged 18 years and under receive (a) direct payments and (b) a personal budget from her Department.

The Government does not issue personal budgets directly. Local authorities are responsible for doing so for children and young people who have special educational needs and disabilities with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. The latest data is that there were 2,025 personal budgets in place for EHC plans issued and reviewed during 2015. This relates to all children and young people aged 0-25; we do not hold the information for under-18s only.

Direct payments are an option within personal budgets for these children and young people. We do not hold information on the number of direct payments, but in the 2016-17 financial year, £4,726,000 was spent from local authority High Needs Budgets on these direct payments.

Personal health budgets are also available to people who need to receive healthcare funded by the National Health Service, where the benefits of having the budget for healthcare outweigh any additional costs associated with having one.

For children and young people under 18, local authorities are also under a duty to offer direct payments for services which the local authority may provide to children with disabilities, or their families, under the section 17 of the Children Act 1989.