The Personal Assistance Budget is a budget granted by the Flemish Agency for Disabled Persons or VAPH (http://www.vaph.be).

The VAPH aims to promote participation, integration and equal opportunities for the disabled in all areas of social life. Its ultimate goal is to help these people lead a better and more independent life. This by subsidising facilities and services to people with disabilities:

• Equipment and modifications: To better organise his or her daily life a disabled person is entitled to an allocation in order to cover the cost of a piece of equipment or modification to his or her home or car.
• Services and facilities: The VAPH subsidises services and facilities which provide care for disabled persons through day care or guidance.
• Personal assistance budget: Disabled persons who prefer to live at home can apply for a personal assistance budget. This budget can enable them to employ a home-helper.

When a disabled person is assigned a budget to employ a home-helper, he becomes an employer. Thus, he has to follow all rules of being an employer, like paying social security , getting an insurance etc. Moreover, he also has the legal duty to prove that a minimum of 95% of the assigned budget is used for the wage of the employee or the home-helper. He also has to declare the name and profile of the employee. In brief, the disabled person has to submit the same information to various institutions. The aim of the PAB project is to forward all the information that the disabled person has already submitted to another institution to the VAPH so there's no longer the need to submit the same information twice.

Description of target users and groups

At the end of 2008 there were more than 2 000 persons making use of this budget. Each year the group grows by 250 to 300 persons. More than 5 000 requests are still in review. There are also various non-profit organisations who help the disabled persons with their administration. This project will give them the ability to focus on the person.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project is a close co-operation between the Coordination Cell E-government and its MAGDA-Platform, the Flemish Agency for Disabled Persons, the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security and the National Social Security Office.

The aim is that when the disabled person has been assigned a budget and has the ability to employ someone, he will be able to log on to a secure site where he gives the information regarding the person he (will) employ(s). From that moment on, by using services foreseen by the CBSS and the NSSO, transported through the MAGDA-platform, the VAPH will have the ability to regularly follow-up on the amounts spent on employment.

Main results, benefits and impacts

The project has, next to the direct benefit to the disabled person, several other benefits. We've already mentioned that there were more than 5 000 requests pending. Before the project, the employees of VAPH had to enter the data from the forms sent by the disabled person manually, with all risks for possible errors. By transmitting the data application-to-application this risk is highly reduced. The employees of VAPH will have much more time to perform the follow-up on the pending files.

Whilst following the guidelines of the Flemish service for administrative simplification who set normes for calculating the benefits for both administrations and citizen, it has been that the benefits for the administration will be 2 FTE's a year. The biggest impact though is the one for the citizen of approx. 1,92 million euro per year. If the VAPH reaches 5 000 persons, this could add up to approximately 5 million euros per year!

Return on investment

Return on investment: €15-49,000

Track record of sharing

This project has been chosen as a VIP-project for the flemish region.

Lessons learnt

Given the fact that the project is still ongoing there are still lessons to be learnt.

Nevertheless here is what has been learnt up to now:

Lesson 1: Actors must try to use the authentic data-source, as it is the only legitimate reality. This way there isn't the minor kind of doubt.
Lesson 2: Actors must also make sure that available ICT components and information are re-used to a maximum. Also use already existing networks, means of electronic identification, authentication and authorisation, interoperability frameworks and their accompanying basic services, portal environments, and the electronic information that is accessible from validated databases inside and outside of government.
Lesson 3: With different partners along the road, one must make sure that clear agreements on budget, target, milestones etc. are made. This way the trust between the parties remains throughout the whole project.

Scope: National, Regional (sub-national)