As part of the Aiming High for Disabled Children agenda, the government is looking to overhaul funding for children with complex needs and disabilities to create tailor-made packages of care through individual budgets.
A national pilot is being planned, but Department for Children, Schools and Families-commissioned research into previous budgeting pilots has found they are beset by problems.
Lack of support for councils from central government was a major concern for the pilots, which included individual budgets for adults and children at a local level.
They told researchers that councils lacked the capacity, experience and infrastructure to deal with individual budgets. Researchers also found that commissioning of services was "relatively underdeveloped in many local authorities". Funding was another area of concern among the 100 council workers, families and service providers interviewed for the research.
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