How to get local authority funding for care in your own home

The order matters, and so does the fact that the two gates are separate. The council must carry out the needs assessment for anyone who appears to need care, and it is not allowed to skip it because it assumes the savings are too high. Families with money above the limit still gain from it: a written record of eligible needs, free equipment and adaptations, a carer's assessment for the family member, and the council's duty to arrange the care if they ask it to. The different types of care funding sets the council route beside the NHS, benefits and paying yourself.

1. 1

   Find the right council

   Five minutes

   Adult social care sits with the county or unitary council, not the district. Search the council's name with "adult social care" or use gov.uk's postcode finder. Most have an online form and a phone line; the phone line is faster when the need is urgent.
2. 2

   Ask for a care needs assessment

   The same day

   Say who it is for, what has changed, and why it cannot wait if it cannot. Say plainly that you are asking for a care needs assessment under the Care Act. If you are told your relative will not qualify because of their savings, that is wrong: the council must assess anyone who appears to need care.
3. 3

   Agree how and when

   Days to weeks

   The assessment can be at home, by phone or online, or start with a self-assessment form. Ask for a home visit if your relative is unlikely to describe a bad day over the phone. The guidance says the timescale should be reasonable and proportionate to the urgency, and the council should tell you what it will be.
4. 4

   Ask for a carer's assessment at the same time

   Free

   If you or somebody else in the family is doing the caring, you are entitled to your own assessment of what you need to keep going. It can be done together with your relative's or separately. What is a carer's assessment? explains what it covers.

The ten outcomes in the second condition are ordinary parts of a day. Your relative is treated as unable to achieve one if they need somebody's help with it, can only manage it with significant pain, distress or anxiety, would put themselves or somebody else at risk doing it, or would take far longer than most people. So a father who can still wash himself, but only by sitting on the edge of the bath for forty minutes and getting cold, is unable to achieve that outcome in the legal sense, and it is worth saying so in those words.

The third condition is where the assessor steps back. Two outcomes out of reach is the threshold, but the effect on wellbeing has to be significant: on dignity, on health, on control over daily life, on being safe, on seeing people. Somebody who cannot cook and cannot get to the shops, and who has lost a stone since spring and stopped answering the door, meets it. The same two outcomes in somebody with a partner who cooks, a neighbour who shops and a full diary may not. The assessor must look at the whole picture, and must record it.

Three things in that example decide most cases. The house is disregarded for care at home, so nobody has to sell it, take out equity release or sign a deferred payment agreement, which exist for care home fees and not for this. Savings below £14,250 are ignored entirely; between £14,250 and £23,250 the council adds £1 a week of assumed income for every £250 or part of it, so £20,000 in the bank adds £23 a week to the contribution and nothing more; above £23,250 your relative pays the full cost, though the council will still arrange the care if asked. Income is counted, including the State Pension, private pensions, Pension Credit and the daily living parts of Attendance Allowance, PIP or DLA, but earnings from work, the mobility part of PIP or DLA and the savings credit part of Pension Credit are left out, and the council must leave your relative with the Minimum Income Guarantee: £241.45 a week for a single person over State Pension age, £184.30 each for a couple, plus £55.25 where somebody in the household gets Carer's Allowance. It must also allow for disability-related spending the care plan does not cover, and for housing costs no benefit pays, before it takes anything at all.

A direct payment is the route that lets your relative keep the same person coming into the house. The money arrives every four weeks, into a bank account or a prepaid card, and it can pay a self-employed carer found through PrimeCarers directly. Carers here charge £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, usually about £20, against £28 to £35 through an agency, so the same budget buys more hours, and the personal budget is meant to be set at a level that meets the needs, not at the council's own rate. Keep the invoices and bank statements, because the council checks how the money was spent, usually once a year. Publicly funded care explained walks through managing a direct payment, and private carers through choosing one.

Delay itself can be complained about. There is no fixed number of days for a needs assessment, but the guidance says it must be done over a reasonable timescale that reflects the urgency, and the Ombudsman expects the financial assessment within about 4 weeks of it. If you are told there is a waiting list of months, ask what the council is doing to meet the need in the meantime and put the request in writing. Age UK's local branches and Citizens Advice will help with the letters, and neither charges for it.