You may be eligible for support at home from social services.
Usually, the social services department carries out a community care assessment of your care needs. This can also be done for children with disabilities or special needs.
Once the assessment has been done, your local authority decides whether or not it will provide or arrange services for you. It does this by comparing your assessed care needs with eligibility criteria that it has set for community care services. You can find contact details for your local authority through the Search for services box on the right-hand side of this page.
There are no national eligibility criteria for community care services. Each local authority sets its own criteria, and so there are variations around the country. However, the Department of Health has issued guidance on fair access to care services, setting out the framework for determining eligibility that local authorities should consider when setting their criteria.
If your social services department agrees that your needs are high, it has a duty to provide services to meet those needs. The types of services that your local authority (and charities) may provide include:
- laundry services
- continence services
- library services
- meals on wheels
- telecare
- help at home from care workers (known as home help)
These paid workers can help bathe you, feed you and get you up and dressed. They can also do your shopping and do practical tasks around the house like cooking and cleaning.
Help at home on the NHS
Some services will be paid for by the NHS, so they will be free. In other cases, social services will do a financial assessment to calculate whether you have to make any financial contribution.
Paying for help at home
If you’re not eligible for home help or services on the NHS, you can buy this help privately. There are several ways to do this.
- A home care agency will provide a service through a trained team of care workers.
- Charities such as Age UK and Crossroads also provide home help for a small charge.
Further information
