This Bachelor’s thesis was a case study of personal budgeting in work and daily activities for people with learning disabilities. In Vantaa, the experiment was a part of the 'Tiedän mitä tahdon!' project (I know what I want!), and in Helsinki, the experiment was started without background actors. The purpose of this study was to reach two things. The first step was to obtain information about how the self-determination of service users was implemented in work and daily operations and how personal budgeting possibly modified the clients’ possibility to make independent decisions. The second aim was to find out what opportunities and challenges personal budgeting set to work and daily activities.

The method of this study was interviewing. The data was collected by interviewing three groups: the users of the budget, so called “Päämies” (customers) (N = 4), customers’ family and others close to them (N = 3) and employees in Helsinki and Vantaa (N = 7). The analysis was conducted by searching for common themes from the interviews, based on the theory.

The results showed that the person-centred approach was considered important. The person-centred plans were made with the service users and their desires and needs were made visible in the plans. The opportunities of the customers to influence the selection of the work and daily activity place and contents of the activities, however, were still small. The results showed that the contributory factors of making independent decisions were the customer's need for support, the amount of past experiences, the amount of information, activity of those close to one, as well as the number of employees and their attitudes. The self-determination in work and daily activities could be increased by offering choices and opportunities to try new things. The person-centred approach to work and active support were crucial to increasing customer empowerment. Personal budgeting seemed to increase the customer's self-determination, especially when it was based on using person-centred design.

The results lead to the conclusion that personal budgeting offers a viable alternative to implement work and daily activities when the customer's wishes and needs cannot be responded to within the framework of the traditional system. The challenges of personal budgeting are coordination and targeting, as well as how personal support to the customer is organized.