The short answer
- Anyone can ask, and it costs nothingRing the adult social care team at the council where your relative lives and ask for a care needs assessment. The council has to carry one out wherever somebody appears to need care and support.
- Savings do not decide whether your relative is assessedThe Care Act says the assessment happens whatever the level of need and whatever your relative's finances. Money is looked at separately, afterwards.
- Two of ten everyday things is the testThe council checks whether an illness or impairment stops your relative managing two or more of ten everyday things, and whether that has a significant effect on their wellbeing.
- You do not have to wait for it before arranging careThere is no legal time limit on an assessment. You can arrange and pay for care while you wait, and care already in place does not count against your relative.
This page describes England, where the Care Act 2014 applies. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own systems. Statutory figures are the 2026/27 rates from gov.uk, checked September 2026.
What it is
What a care needs assessment is, and who can ask for one
The name makes it sound like a test your relative has to pass. It is closer to a long, careful conversation about an ordinary day: what they can still do, what has become hard, and what would make the difference.
What the assessment is
- A conversation about what your relative can and cannot manage on an ordinary day
- Free, and separate from any question about money
- A duty on the council wherever somebody appears to need care and support
- The way in to council-funded care, equipment, adaptations and an assessment of your own needs as the family carer
- Written down afterwards, with the reasons, whatever the council decides
What it is not
- A test of whether your relative deserves help
- A means test. That is a separate financial assessment, and it comes later
- Something only people with no savings may ask for
- A decision you have to accept without asking how it was reached
- A reason to put off arranging care in the meantime
Section 9 of the Care Act 2014 puts the duty on the council: where it appears that an adult may have needs for care and support, the council must assess whether they do and what those needs are. Subsection 3 settles the question families ask first, because the assessment happens regardless of the level of the adult's needs or the level of their financial resources. A relative with a house and savings has the same right to be assessed as one with neither.
The assessment has to involve the person themselves, any carer they have, and anybody else they ask the council to involve, so you can be there. It looks wider than paid visits too, because the council must consider whether equipment, an adaptation or a community service would help instead. If you are still working out whether your parent needs help at all, the signs that a parent is struggling at home comes before this page, and home care covers the kinds of help an assessment points at.
How to ask
How to ask the council, and what to say when you ring
There is no form to get hold of first, no GP referral, and no diagnosis to produce. One phone call starts it, and it is free.
- 1
Find the right council
Ten minutesAdult social care sits with the county council or the unitary authority where your relative lives, not where you live. The gov.uk postcode lookup takes you to the right team and its number. Some councils take the request through an online form instead. - 2
Ask for a care needs assessment, in those words
The phrase that mattersGive your relative's name, address and date of birth, say you are calling because they are struggling at home, and ask for a care needs assessment under the Care Act. Naming the assessment gets you to the right queue rather than to a leaflet. - 3
Describe the worst week, not the average one
Before you ringWhoever takes the call writes down what you tell them, and that note decides how urgent this looks. Say what happened rather than how it felt: the fall in the bathroom, the four days without a proper meal, the night they could not get back into bed. - 4
Ask for a carer's assessment for yourself at the same time
A separate rightIf you are the one doing the caring, you have your own right to an assessment of what that is costing you, whether or not your relative wants any help. Ask for both in the same call. What a carer’s assessment is explains what it covers. - 5
Ask when it will happen, and say so if it is urgent
Write the answer downThe statutory guidance says an assessment should be carried out over an appropriate and reasonable timescale, and that the council should give the person an indicative timescale. Ask for that date and note who gave it. If your relative is unsafe now, say so plainly: a council can meet urgent needs before any assessment.
Your relative has to agree to be assessed. Where an adult refuses, the council is not required to assess them, with two exceptions in section 11 of the Act: where the person lacks the capacity to make that decision and an assessment would be in their best interests, and where they are experiencing or at risk of abuse or neglect. A refusal is not permanent, and your relative can ask later. Where it is coming from pride or from fear of losing the house, how to get someone to accept care covers the conversation.
On the day
What happens at the assessment, and what to make sure gets said
A social worker or an occupational therapist works through the day with your relative, usually at home and usually in an hour or two. Some councils do part of it by telephone or through a form filled in beforehand. The tone is conversational, and that is where families come unstuck, because a conversation invites a brave answer.
Worth having ready, and worth saying out loud
0 of 11 ticked
Have these to hand
Things families forget to mention
Your own position
The financial assessment may run alongside the needs assessment, but the statutory guidance is explicit that it must never influence it, and no eligibility decision can be made until the needs assessment is finished. If the conversation slides towards savings too early, it is fair to say you would like to finish the needs part first.
How they decide
The three tests the council applies to what it finds
Eligibility is not left to a social worker's judgement of how bad things look. It is set nationally, in three conditions, and all three have to be met. The second is a closed list of ten everyday outcomes, and most decisions turn on it.
All three have to be true
First
The difficulty comes from a physical or mental impairment or illness
A diagnosis is not required, and the regulation does not list conditions. Frailty, sight loss, a stroke, arthritis, dementia, a mental health condition and the effects of an operation all count.
Second
Because of it, your relative cannot manage two or more of these ten things
The list below is the whole list, and it is the same in every council in England. Two is the number that matters, so it is worth going through all ten rather than stopping at the one that worries you most.
Managing and maintaining nutrition
Getting food in, preparing it, and eating and drinking enough.
Maintaining personal hygiene
Washing, bathing or showering, and keeping clothes and bedding clean.
Managing toilet needs
Getting to the toilet in time, and managing continence.
Being appropriately clothed
Dressing and undressing, and being warm enough for the weather.
Being able to make use of the home safely
Stairs, the kitchen, the bathroom, and moving about without falling.
Maintaining a habitable home environment
A home that is safe and clean enough to live in, with heating and repairs kept up.
Developing and maintaining family or personal relationships
Still seeing the people who matter to them rather than being shut in.
Accessing and engaging in work, training, education or volunteering
Getting to any of these and taking part in them.
Making use of necessary facilities or services in the local community
Shops, the GP surgery, the bus, a place of worship.
Carrying out any caring responsibilities for a child
Looking after a child they are responsible for.
Any one of these counts as being unable to manage something on the list
- They need help from another person to do it
- They can do it alone, but it causes significant pain, distress or anxiety
- Doing it alone puts their own or somebody else’s health or safety at risk
- They can do it alone, but it takes significantly longer than it should
Where needs come and go, the council has to look at a period long enough to see the pattern, so describe the bad days as well as the good ones.
Third
And not managing them has a significant effect on their wellbeing
Wellbeing is defined in the Care Act and covers personal dignity, physical and mental health, control over daily life, family relationships and living somewhere suitable. This is the condition families most often leave unspoken, so say it out loud at the assessment.
Care Act 2014 section 13, and regulation 2 of the Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015. England only.
If all three conditions are met, the needs are eligible and the council has a duty to meet them, subject to the financial assessment in the next section. If they are not, the council still has to say so in writing, with its reasons, and give advice about what might meet those needs. Ask for that written record either way, because it is the document any later challenge starts from.
Two of the ten outcomes catch families out. Maintaining a habitable home environment covers heating, repairs and a home safe enough to live in, which is why an assessment sometimes ends in a handrail or a key safe rather than in visits. Making use of facilities or services in the local community covers getting to the shops and the surgery, so being unable to leave the house alone belongs on the list.
Who pays for the care
What the assessment costs, and what the care costs afterwards
The assessment is free to everybody. Paying for what it recommends is a separate question, settled by a separate financial assessment, and the rules for care at home are gentler than the ones people have heard about for care homes.
£23,250
Upper capital limit in England
Above this in savings and other capital, your relative pays the full cost of their care. The assessment is still free.
£14,250
Lower capital limit
Below this, capital is disregarded altogether and only income is taken into account.
£241.45
Minimum income guarantee a week, pension age
A charge for care outside a care home must not take income below this. From 25 to pension credit age it is £120.4.
6 weeks
Reablement free of charge
Intermediate care and reablement are free for up to six weeks, as are aids and minor adaptations up to £1,000.
Department of Health and Social Care local authority circular for 2026/27, published 17 February 2026, and the Care and Support statutory guidance. Checked September 2026.
Three things about charging for care at home are worth knowing beforehand. The value of the home your relative lives in is left out of the capital assessment, so the house is not in the sum the way it would be for a permanent care home place. Councils are not obliged to charge for care outside a care home at all, so what a neighbour in the next county pays is no guide. And where a disability benefit is counted as income, the council should allow for disability-related expenditure, which covers privately arranged care, a community alarm, extra laundry and other costs that come with the condition. Take a list of those costs to the financial assessment rather than hoping they are assumed.
If your relative's capital is above the upper limit they pay for their own care, and they can still ask the council to arrange it for them. That is the one situation in which a council may charge an administration fee, and the fee must not be more than the cost of arranging the care. Local authority funding goes through the financial assessment in detail, self-funding your care covers the position above the limit, and where your relative's needs are mainly to do with health rather than daily living, NHS Continuing Healthcare is a separate route that is not means tested.
What happens after
The care plan, the personal budget and the review
A decision that your relative is eligible begins the paperwork rather than ending it. Several documents follow, and each is something you are entitled to see and to question.
- First
The written record of the decision
The council must give your relative a written record of the eligibility decision and the reasons for it. Ask for it if it does not arrive, and read it against what you said at the assessment.
- Next
A care and support plan
The plan sets out the eligible needs, what your relative wants day-to-day life to look like, and how each need will be met. You should both be part of writing it rather than sent it once it is finished.
- With the plan
A personal budget
What the council believes it will cost to meet the eligible needs, split into what it pays and what your relative pays after the financial assessment. If the figure looks too small for the plan, question it then.
- If you want to choose the carer
A direct payment
Rather than the council arranging the care, the money can be paid to your relative, or to you on their behalf, to buy care that meets the plan. Councils normally ask for a record of the spending.
- About 6 to 8 weeks in
A light-touch review
The guidance expects a short check that the plan is working once it has been running a while. It is the easiest moment to change something set too low.
- Within a year
A full review
The guidance expects a plan to be reviewed no later than every twelve months. You do not have to wait for it: ask for an earlier review, in writing, whenever needs change.
A direct payment is the point at which families often start choosing a carer themselves, because care the council arranges comes from whichever agency holds its contract. Writing a care plan covers turning the council's plan into something a carer can work from, and how many visits a week your parent needs turns the hours in it into a week that makes sense.
If the answer is no
If your relative is found not eligible, or the wait is long
A refusal is not the end of it, and neither is a long wait. Four things are worth doing, and the last of them puts care in place while the rest is still going on.
Get the reasons in writing and read them against the ten outcomes
You are entitled to this
Ask for a reassessment if something was missed or has changed
Any time
Complain to the council first, then the Ombudsman
Council first, then 12 months
If the council will not be paying, the care still has to happen, and arranging it yourself is quicker than any of the routes above. Carers on PrimeCarers are self-employed and set their own rates, which run from £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, against £28 to £35 an hour for the same visit from an agency. You can search for carers near your relative and compare their rates, reviews and availability before you have heard back from the council, and paying privately does not weaken an assessment still in the queue. What care costs where you live puts a figure on a week in your relative's area.
Questions
Questions families ask about care needs assessments
Contact the adult social care team at the council where she lives, by telephone or through its website, and ask for a care needs assessment under the Care Act. You do not need a GP referral, a diagnosis or any paperwork. Give her name, address and date of birth, describe what has been going wrong, and ask when the assessment will happen. If she is unsafe now, say so, because a council can meet urgent needs before an assessment has been carried out.
Yes. The assessment, the eligibility decision and the care and support plan are free to everybody, whatever your relative owns. What may be charged for is the care that follows, and that is worked out separately in a financial assessment. A council may charge an administration fee in one situation only: where somebody with capital above the upper limit asks the council to arrange their care for them, and even then it cannot be more than the cost of arranging it.
Yes. Section 9 of the Care Act says the assessment must happen regardless of the level of the adult's needs or the level of their financial resources. Savings and property affect who pays afterwards, not whether the assessment takes place. Above £23,250 in capital your relative pays the full cost of their care, though for care at home the value of the home they live in is left out of that calculation. Self-funding your care covers the position above the limit.
There is no legal time limit. The statutory guidance says an assessment should be carried out over an appropriate and reasonable timescale, taking account of how urgent the needs are, and that the council should tell the person an indicative timescale. Ask for that date when you first ring, write down who gave it to you, and ring back if it passes. Where somebody is unsafe, a council can put care in place before assessing.
Questions about an ordinary day: getting up, washing and dressing, using the toilet, cooking and eating, moving about the house, taking medicines, getting out, keeping the house liveable, and who helps at the moment. The assessor may ask your relative to describe or show how they do something, such as getting out of a chair. Underneath the conversation sits a list of ten outcomes set in law, so go through that list beforehand and note what is hard about each one.
The council must give the decision in writing with its reasons, and must give advice about what could meet those needs and about stopping them from getting worse. Read the reasons against the ten outcomes, because a refusal often rests on one that was never discussed or was recorded as managed. You can ask for a reassessment at any point, and you can complain to the council and then to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which expects to hear from you within twelve months of you knowing about the problem.
Yes, and it does not count against your relative. Care already in place is part of the picture the assessor looks at. Carers on PrimeCarers charge £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, against £28 to £35 an hour from an agency, and a live-in carer starts at £1,050 a week. Cost of care sets the rates out in full.
You can ask, and the council will usually speak to your relative about it. If they refuse, the council is not required to assess them, unless they lack the capacity to make that decision and an assessment would be in their best interests, or they are experiencing or at risk of abuse or neglect. A refusal is not final: they can ask later, and the council must then carry the assessment out. You can also ask for an assessment of your own needs as their carer whatever they decide.