Paying for home care, day care and other services
Most people will have to pay something towards the cost of the social care they receive.
If you are thinking about residential or nursing care, then you should read our Paying for residential care pages. If you are thinking about social care at home, you should continue reading below.
How do we work out the charges?
There are two main ways that we charge people:
- Set charges - for example, the meals service costs £1.90 for each meal.
- Charging policy - we work out how much you will have to contribute based on your income, captial and disability related spending. Some services for people with mental health problems are free.
How does the charging policy work?
After you have had an assessment of your needs, a charging assessor will visit you to work out your income, capital and disability related spending.
Income
This includes things like benefits and pensions that you get. Some income (wages and Disability Living Allowance mobility) is not included.
Capital
This is money that you can get if you ask for it - premium bonds, savings, ISAs etc. It does not include the value of your house. We ignore any capital you have up to £13,500. If you have over £13,500 then for every £250 or part of £250 over £13,500 we count as an extra £1 income per week.
Disability related spending
This is money on top of normal spending that we agree you have to spend because of your disability. Once the charging assessor has worked these out, they will be able to tell you how much you have to pay. The calculations can be complicated.
Downloadable documents
- Charging for community care services (Adobe PDF format, 212kb)
- Charging for community care services detailed explanation (Adobe PDF format, 222kb)
If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.
This page was last updated on 06 October 2008
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