If you think that you, or somebody you know, requires help to cope day-to-day, you can ask the Adult Social Care team at your local authority to carry out a care needs assessment. These are free of charge and available to everybody.

Somebody from the local authority will contact you and ask several questions relevant to your day-to-day activities, seeking to ascertain whether you need additional support, and if so, what level of care would be most suitable.

The local authority will review the information gathered in the conversation, and provide you with the results of the assessment.

This can identify small steps for assistance, such as additional handrails or access to lunch clubs or day centres, to assistance in your home from a paid carer, through to a recommendation of full time residential or nursing care.

If the assessment determines you require care, you will be expected to pay towards the cost of this, and a financial assessment will be carried out to determine the extent to which this the local authority will assist.

There are various funding options available for social care, and in the next post we will look more closely at these, and go on to look at why it is so important to be plan ahead.

There are many ways in which you can protect your assets against the cost of future care fees, and our experts are able to look at your individual circumstances and identify tailored solutions to do just this.