How one family secured 24-hour care funding: the evidence that helps a council say yes

A council agreed to fund round-the-clock live-in care for a man with dementia after months of the answer being no. What changed was not how upset his family were. It was a dated log of what kept going wrong, one letter from a consultant, and a clear picture of what would happen in the next fortnight if nobody helped.

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The month the answer changed

A son rang our team in the spring, still slightly stunned. His father has dementia, and for months the family had been going round the same loop with their local authority: an assessment, a review, a promise to come back to them, then nothing they could plan around. Then the council agreed to fund 24-hour live-in care at home, at a rate benchmarked against what a local care home would have cost, most likely paid as a direct payment so the family could arrange the carers themselves.

“I was told this is extremely rare, for it to just actually go through like this.”

When we asked what he thought had made the difference, he did not talk about persistence or luck.

“I had so much evidence. Hundreds of logs. I think they just couldn’t ignore it.”

That is the part worth copying. A social worker is not deciding whether your family deserves help. They are writing an assessment that has to stand up in front of a panel with a fixed budget, and they can only put in it what they can evidence. Distress moves people, but it does not give them a line to write down. A log does.

Most families who call us about funding are not fighting anybody. They are trying to get a busy person with a large caseload to the point where saying yes is the easy, defensible thing to do.

What a social worker can actually use

A dated incident log

Not a diary of feelings. A dated, timed record of what goes wrong and what it takes to put right: what happened, how long it took, who was there, and what would have happened if nobody was.

Nights carry the most weight. Night needs are what push a package from a few visits a day to live-in or waking cover, and they are the hardest thing for anyone to picture from the outside. One daughter described watching her mother on the camera going up and down the stairs at three in the morning, panicking because she thought she had to do everything herself and could not think how to begin. Written down as six dated entries across a fortnight, that stops being a worry and becomes a pattern. If nights are your issue, our piece on what dementia at home actually looks like at 3am will help you describe them precisely.

Log the small strange things too. Yoghurt in the freezer. Tablets missed, then taken twice. A pan left on. Families often leave these out because writing them down feels disloyal. Together they are the difference between “some memory problems” and “unsafe alone”.

One clinical letter

You do not need a folder of medical records. You need one letter from a clinician who already knows the person, a consultant, a memory service or a GP, saying plainly what the diagnosis is and what supervision it implies. The son above credited a consultant’s letter alongside his logs. A social worker can quote a clinician in a way they cannot quote a relative. Ask in writing, explain what it is for, and share your log so you are both describing the same fortnight.

A near-term picture, not a general plea

“We are struggling” is true of every family in the queue. “From the 14th, there is nobody at the house between 6pm and 8am” is a specific risk on a specific date, and it is something a duty team can act on. Keep it factual and keep it kind. You are handing over a problem with a date on it, not an accusation.

Setting a date, and leaving a buffer

One daughter, caring for her father with dementia while holding down a job and her own health, decided she would formally step back from covering the gaps on a set date, whatever was decided at an upcoming review. What made it work rather than blow up was that she said so in advance, in writing, and arranged five days of family cover after that date purely as handover time.

“There’s five days of buffer where the council have time to sort this out.”

That is not a threat. It is a timeline, and a timeline lets a stretched team put your case in the right week rather than the right month. She was close to the edge when she made the decision.

“I think I would have just shut down and had a bit of a breakdown, to be honest with you.”

If you are the person filling the gaps, you are entitled to a carer’s assessment in your own right, separate from the assessment of the person you care for. Families skip it constantly. It is often the fastest route to respite, and what it records about your limits feeds straight into the case for a bigger package.

What the money looks like when it arrives

Approval usually means a personal budget, and increasingly a direct payment: the council pays an agreed amount into a separate account and you arrange the care yourself. As one daughter put it, she wanted the budget and the freedom to sort the rest out herself. It also makes you the one running a rota, a payroll and a set of relationships. Our guide to local authority funding for care at home covers how the assessment and the money fit together, and our sibling piece on the six things nobody tells you about direct payments covers what changes the day the money is yours.

Two things are worth asking at the point of approval, and families forget both in the relief of a yes:

• Can any of what we have already paid be backdated? The answer depends on local policy and on when the need was first recorded. Ask in writing, and accept the answer.
• How should I word a request for more hours later? Ask how your social worker would like increases evidenced. Families who ask this get faster answers for years afterwards.

Many families already have someone informal in the picture, a neighbour or friend helping for love rather than money. Putting them on the books is often best for everyone, but it changes things for them: they may need a DBS check, and paid work can affect their benefits. Have that conversation gently and early, and offer to cover the check. One daughter told us she nearly lost a much loved helper because nobody had explained the paperwork.

If you are recruiting from scratch, PrimeCarers checks carers’ identity, right to work and DBS documents, and carers complete our onboarding before they are introduced to families.

PrimeCarers is an introductory platform and does not provide, manage, supervise or clinically assess care. Clients remain responsible for checking carer documentation, interviewing carers, checking suitability for their specific needs, and agreeing the scope of care directly with the carer.

Treat the budget as something you can overspend

The families who get into trouble after approval are rarely the ones who were refused. They are the ones who spent to the ceiling.

A woman managing her brother’s care told us she deliberately agrees rates a little below the council’s maximum, so there is room in the pot when something unexpected lands. She learned it the hard way: a couple of years earlier a budget she knew well was exceeded, and around ten carers went unpaid for roughly three months. The trust never fully came back, and carers who go unpaid do not come back either. On another case, a directly employed carer’s unexpected tax bill of about a thousand pounds had to come out of the same budget. A client who manages her own care put it simply: better to keep a rainy day fund than to use every approved hour and find yourself short in a bad month.

Building that buffer does not mean pushing carers down to a rate nobody can live on. In 2026, self-employed carers booked privately are typically £18 to £25 an hour and live-in carers through the platform roughly £130 to £190 a day, against agency rates commonly £25 to £35 an hour for visits and from about £239 a day for live-in. Agree a rate you can sustain for a year, not the maximum you can afford this month. Comparing live-in care with a care home is worth doing before your review, since councils frequently benchmark a home package against local residential costs.

If the needs are health needs

Where someone’s needs are primarily health needs rather than social care needs, the funding may sit with the NHS instead, through NHS Continuing Healthcare. It normally starts with a checklist, and if that is passed, a fuller assessment by a group of professionals looking at the nature, intensity, complexity and unpredictability of the needs. If it is awarded, it can cover a full care package. We cannot tell you whether any individual will qualify, and nobody honest will.

What we can tell you is that the waiting is where families come unstuck. One daughter running her own rota for her father described being left in limbo when the assessment stalled and her assessor went on leave, with no clear idea who to speak to or when. By then she was frightened a care home would be the only affordable option.

So ask for the mechanics up front, politely and in writing: who is coordinating the assessment, what the next step is, roughly when it is expected, and who covers the case if that person is away. If the money is already late, our piece on what a funding delay actually does to a person covers how families and carers get through the gap without the care collapsing.

What to do next

1. Start the log today, not when the review is booked. Two weeks of dated, timed entries is worth more than six months of memory. Include nights, medication and anything that would have gone badly without you.
2. Ask one clinician for one letter stating the diagnosis and the supervision it implies, and share your log so you are describing the same period.
3. Put a date and a buffer in writing. Say what you can cover, until when, and what happens after. Leave a few days of handover so a yes can actually be arranged.
4. Request a carer’s assessment for yourself alongside the main assessment, even if you feel you are coping.
5. Plan the care under the ceiling, not at it. When you are ready to recruit, you can post a job setting out the hours, rate and night cover you need, then interview and agree the scope directly with the carer.

Related reading

• Direct payments: the money is yours, and six things nobody tells you
• Nobody tells you: what you can ask for when the hospital says care home
• When the money is late: what a funding delay does to a person
• How to get local authority funding for care in your own home
• Funding care: the complete UK guide