Direct payments uptake has stalled for years. The reason isn’t process - it’s what happens in the assessment conversation. Here’s why a well-designed RAS changes that.

The conversation that isn't happening often enough

Direct payments are not a new concept. For nearly 30 years we have understood the difference they can make - giving people genuine choice and control over their support, and the freedom to shape it around their own lives and outcomes. At NCASC 2025, Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care, reinforced that position: direct payments remain a primary vehicle for delivering personalisation and self-directed support. The ambition is not new. The barriers, though, have proved persistent.

One of the most underacknowledged is what happens in the room before a direct payment is even discussed.

When a practitioner sits down with someone to assess their care needs, the ideal is a conversation about what matters to that person: what does a good day look like, what goals are important, what outcomes do they want to achieve and what kind of support would genuinely help them get there? That is the strengths-based, outcomes-led approach the Care Act 2014 requires.

But that conversation is hard to have when the practitioner is simultaneously trying to estimate costs, anticipate panel scrutiny and frame a request that will stand up to challenge. Funding anxiety competes with practice quality. The result is support plans that follow the contours of what’s available, not what the person wants. Services get placed against needs. Outcomes get recorded after the fact, not planned from the start. And direct payments uptake suffers - because that conversation requires a more confident and collaborative space than funding anxiety allows.

The value a RAS can offer to this conversation is often overlooked. At its core, a Resource Allocation System (RAS) generates an indicative budget based on assessed needs and outcomes, giving people and practitioners a clear, fair starting point for support planning. But in recent years much of the debate has focused on its limitations - rather than what it makes possible.

The problem isn't the indicative budget, it's the uncertainty about it. When that uncertainty is resolved early, it frees the practitioner to focus on what the money is for: the outcomes the person wants to achieve, and what support would help them do it.

Assessment and funding, working together

Connected Practice and Connected Funding are designed to work together. Connected Practice provides the framework for strengths-based, outcomes-led assessment - structured to help practitioners capture what matters to the person, what outcomes they want to achieve, and what support would help them get there.

Connected Funding picks up that conversation. The indicative budget flows directly from what’s been agreed about the person’s eligible needs and outcomes. It reflects the conversation rather than constraining it.

On average, councils generate an indicative budget within 10 minutes of completing an assessment, landing within 5% of actual costs. That accuracy matters - not because precision is the point, but because confidence is. When a practitioner knows the indicative budget is fair, needs-based and defensible, they stop carrying the financial risk of the conversation alone. They can share it with the person and say: this is what your assessed needs suggest you should have to work with. Now let's talk about how you want to use it.

That is when the direct payments conversation opens up rather than closes down - a genuine starting point for thinking about what good support could look like and what outcomes it could help the person achieve.

For practitioners, that means:

• Less time estimating costs and second-guessing approvals
• More time for outcomes-focused support planning and collaborative decision-making
• Reduced panel reliance - cutting delay between assessment and support
• Support plans shaped by outcomes, not availability

For the person drawing on care and support, the impact flows from the same source. When the practitioner isn’t distracted by funding anxiety, the conversation is better. People are more likely to hear direct payments presented as a genuine option, understand the value, and feel supported through the decision.

What this means for commissioning

There is a dimension to this that goes beyond individual support planning. A well-designed RAS doesn’t just produce indicative budgets — it produces consistent, comparable data about need and cost across the whole population. A consistent, needs-based methodology means figures can be aggregated in ways that fragmented, locally-estimated budgets cannot. Commissioners can see where need is concentrated, how it is changing, and what it is likely to cost — grounded in assessed outcomes rather than historic spend.

When commissioners can see the relationship between assessed outcomes and cost, they can move away from commissioning services and towards commissioning outcomes: allocating resource in ways that are more likely to produce the results people and councils are actually trying to achieve, and making a credible case for upstream investment in prevention.

Connected Insights makes this visible over time. It turns the practice data generated through Connected Funding into a consistent dataset that councils can interrogate and benchmark - tracking outcomes, identifying where people get stuck, and comparing approaches across cohorts and peers. Improving outcomes through prevention and choice moves from a stated priority to an evidenced one.

Improving direct payments uptake means improving the conditions in which the conversation happens. Connected Practice and Connected Funding build outcomes-led practice and funding confidence into the same workflow. Connected Insights turns that practice into learning councils can act on.

This isn't about making direct payments easier to administer. It's about giving practitioners the freedom to have better conversations - and giving people a genuine opportunity to shape the support that helps them live the life they want.

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