Under the Care Act 2014, every local authority has certain obligations when providing adult social care. This means that, depending on their needs and financial situation, the person you care for may be entitled to a significant amount of help from their local council.
The best place to begin with claiming support from the local authority is by getting what is known as a Care Needs Assessment or a Needs Assessment.
A needs assessment is a free evaluation conducted by the local authority about the person you care for. It can be for any adult who needs help to manage on a day-to-day basis because of illness, disability or old age. It is sometimes also known as a social care assessment or a care assessment.
The needs assessment aims to find out how someone’s illness, disability or health condition affects them and the people around them. For instance, they will want to know if the person you care for finds it difficult to leave the house, work, keep up with housework or cook their own meals, and how this affects their wellbeing. They will also want to know what goals the person you care for has for their day-to-day life, and whether some form of social care would better enable them to achieve these goals.
A needs assessment is the first step towards the council providing, arranging or funding any further services for the person you care for including mobility equipment, home adaptations, help with household tasks, meals on wheels, paid carers, day centres or care homes.
Any adult can request to have a needs assessment. Under the Care Act 2014, the local authority has a legal duty to provide an assessment for anybody who appears to have a need for care or support. This is regardless of their financial situation or how high or low their support needs appear. Even if you as their carer are currently fully meeting all their needs, they are still entitled to a needs assessment.
The person you care for can refer themselves for a needs assessment or they may be referred by a healthcare professional who has looked after them.
You can also arrange a needs assessment on behalf of your friend or relative. Get in touch with the adult social care team at their local authority directly, either in writing, by phone or online through the GOV.UK website. The person you are arranging it for must agree to have the assessment, unless they don’t have the capacity to make or communicate that decision for themselves.
Everyone has the right to refuse a needs assessment. However, the local authority must be confident that the person has the mental capacity to know what they are doing when they refuse the assessment and also that they are not at risk of abuse or neglect.
The process differs slightly from council to council. Some local authorities will ask the person you care for to complete an online self-assessment form, which they may then discuss in a follow-up meeting. Some will do the assessment by phone or face-to-face instead. If the person you care for would struggle with the format that has been suggested, then they can request to have the assessment in a different format.
If you would like to have a carer’s assessment, it can be carried out at the same time if that is most convenient. See our guide ‘Carer’s assessments’ for further information.
The needs assessment will usually be conducted by a staff member at the local authority. They must be trained to do the assessments, and they are usually qualified in a relevant area for instance as a social worker or occupational therapist. Sometimes the council will ask staff from another local organization to conduct the assessment for them, but the responsibility for the final decision still rests with the council.
In the assessment, they will ask a series of questions to find out how the person you care for manages with day-to-day tasks like washing or dressing themselves, cooking meals or standing up and down. The council may also take into consideration any information you can provide for them about your friend or relative as their carer. They may also talk to other professionals who are involved in their care, such as their GP.
If you would like to know in advance more about will happen during the assessment, you can ask the local authority for a copy of the questions that they will ask. This can help the person you care for to prepare all the relevant information beforehand, so they are ready with as much detail as they can give during the assessment. This can also help reduce the anxiety that some carers and the people they care for can feel about the assessment.
If the person you care for would struggle to understand or complete the assessment alone, then you or another friend or relative can support them as their advocate. You are able to help them complete the assessment, take notes for them and also speak on their behalf. If there is nobody suitable to help them and they have substantial difficulty in dealing with the assessment, the local authority must arrange for them to have an independent advocate. If they are not eligible for this, they may still be able to receive support from a community advocate instead. See our guide 'Getting an independent advocate' for further information.
Each local authority must use the same eligibility conditions, meaning they are consistent across England.
For the person you care to get support from their local authority they must meet all the following criteria:
- Be over 18 years old.
- Be ‘ordinarily resident’ in the local authority area.
- Have care and support needs because of a physical or mental health issue.
- Be stopped from doing two or more of the following ten ‘desired goals and outcomes’ because of their care and support needs:
- Managing and maintaining nutrition.
- Maintaining personal hygiene.
- Managing toilet needs.
- Being appropriately clothed.
- Being able to make use of their home safely.
- Maintaining a habitable home environment.
- Developing and maintaining family or personal relationships.
- Accessing and engaging in work, education, training or volunteering, if they wish to.
- Making use of necessary facilities or services in the local community such as public transport.
- Carrying out caring responsibilities for any children they may have.
- They are assessed as not being able to do these things if they need any help with them, they experience distress, pain or anxiety when they try to do them, or if they are a risk to themselves or someone else when they do them.
- Have their wellbeing significantly impacted by not being able to do these things.
The council will decide, based on the criteria above, whether the person you care for has ‘eligible needs’ or not. They should hear back relatively quickly, often within a week.
They will give the person you care for a copy in writing of their decision and how they reached it. They should also give you a copy too, as their carer.
If the local council decides that your friend or relative doesn’t have any eligible needs, they must still provide information, services and activities to ensure that they don’t develop any needs in the future. They should also tell them about any free community support that might help. If the local authority do not provide this advice, you can ask for it.
If the council decides that the person you care for does have eligible needs, then it has a legal duty under the Care Act 2014 to meet those needs for them. This could be by providing them with support directly or by giving them the details of other organisations that can meet their needs.
The local authority will put together a support plan for the person you care for. This is a document detailing what the council thinks their needs are and how it will meet them. The person you care for should be involved in putting this plan together, along with anyone else they want to be involved, including you as their carer.
If the council thinks that their eligible needs are being met already, for instance by you as their carer, then the local authority does not have to meet these needs, although they should still be recorded in the support plan. It is therefore very important that you are as honest as possible about how much care you are willing or able to provide. They cannot make you carry out any care that you do not want to do.
Once the local authority has ascertained what your friend or relative’s eligible needs are and which ones are not already being met, they will then decide whether to support these needs financially or whether the person you care for must cover some or all of the costs of their care. For more information about this, take a look at our guide ‘Getting local council funding for care costs’.
If they do decide to fund some of the care, then your friend or relative might be able to get a personal budget and direct payments from the council in order to purchase services. To find out more about how this works, take a look at our guide ‘Personal budgets and direct payments’.
Don’t forget that you might be entitled to support from the local authority too, as their carer. Take a look at our guide 'Carer’s assessments’ to find out more.
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