Direct Payments - What will my case worker do?

Your case worker will carry out an assessment (or review) of your needs.  Your assessment is a discussion and agreement about your care needs.  It includes discussing areas such as:

• What care tasks, such as washing and dressing, can you do by yourself? 
• What care tasks can you do if someone helps you?
• Are there care tasks you cannot do at all? 
• Who helps and supports you at present? 
• What is the best way of meeting your needs?
• What equipment is required to promote independence and safety? 
• How much help is your carer able to offer you?

You should try to think about your care needs before your assessment so that you can describe them clearly to your case worker. 

Following the assessment, your case worker will give you a copy of the assessment form that summarises your needs.  You might want to discuss the different ways in which any needs could be met. This could be in the form of Direct Payment or services that could be arranged by your case worker for you or a mixture of them both.  

This information will be given to you in the form of a care plan which shows exactly how your assessed needs will be met.  You can then compare this with your own view of how you would like your care needs to be met.  You may then want to consider the option of receiving a Direct Payment.

At this stage, it is helpful to ask your case worker to give you an idea about the amount of money that would be available to you as a Direct Payment.  A Direct Payment does offer more flexibility so you may find that you could buy more services yourself within the budget allowed.  However, any services you buy must help to meet your assessed needs.  You should discuss this with your case worker.

Charges for home care services

If you are assessed as needing home care services, we will arrange an assessment of your finances.  This will help us decide if you will be charged for these services and if so, how much.  If you are receiving a Direct Payment, this will be reduced by any amount you have been assessed as having to pay. If you are assessed as not having to pay for home care, your Direct Payment will not be affected.