This is a guide to how Adults and Communities charge for some of their care services.

1. These services are called ‘Non Residential’ Care Services. These are things like If you get home care If you are a carer and get a sitting service. If you go to a day service or community opportunities. If you have supported living. If you have a warden where you live or have the use of ‘lifeline’. If you have a personal budget, or a direct payment, for buying your services. In this guidance we start by telling you a little bit about how we work out how much you can afford to pay. This is a guide to how Adults and Communities charge for some of their care services.

2. We pay for some of the things you need. Sometimes you might have to pay some money towards the things you need too. We have to find out how much you can afford to pay. We will do this through something we call a financial assessment. This assessment looks at how much money you have coming in and how much money you spend. We will help you fill in the financial assessment. This gives us all the information we need. The person that will help you will probably be called a Visiting Assessment Officer. When we are helping you to do the assessment we will ask you some questions about the money you have coming in. We will also ask if you have to pay for things because you have a disability. You can have a family member or a friend with you to help you. If you want we can fill in the forms with you over the phone or post a form to you to fill in yourself. The money we get from charging for services helps to keep those services going. If we did not charge for these services it would not be possible to give as many services as we do now.

3. We will find out how much you can afford to pay from the information you have given to us in the financial assessment. The Visiting Assessment Officer may do the assessment using a computer. They will usually be able to tell you what the most amount of money you could be charged will be. You will be given a letter and a breakdown of how we have worked this out. This means the letter will go into more detail about how we have worked things out. If your assessment is harder to work out it may be sent to the ‘Fairer Charging’ team at County Hall. They will look at the referral and write to you to let you know how much you can afford to pay. In the assessment we will ask you about money that you and your partner have, if you have a partner. We call this ‘Capital’. Capital is savings such as money in bank and building society accounts and any shares you have. When we look at your Capital we will also look at what Capital your partner has too. This section is about how we work out how much you can afford to pay. This is called a financial assessment. When we say partner or couple we mean if you are married or living with someone in a relationship. You may have to pay less if you are assessed as a couple.

4. From the money you have coming in we include • Income Support/Pension Credit • Jobseekers Allowance • Retirement Pension • Occupational Pension/Works Pension • Attendance Allowance/ Disability Living care Allowance • Incapacity Benefit/Employment Support Allowance • Widowed Parents Allowance • Severe Disablement Allowance From the money you havegoing out every week we will not include. • Rent not covered by housing benefit • Council tax not covered by council tax benefit • Mortgages and endowment policy • Building insurance if you are paying a mortgage. We need to find out about any property or land that you and your partner own other than where you live now. If you own more than one home we will ask you to pay the full charge. If you have savings above £23,250 (£46,500 if you are a couple) we will ask you to pay the full charge.

5. This section is about the money you have coming in that you need to live on. We have to make sure you have a certain amount of money to live on. The Department for Work and Pensions has told us these are the amounts that you need to have to live on. The Department of Health told us to add more to this. This works out at 25% more. If you are under 25 years of age you need at least £57.35 per week to live on. We have added 25% to this amount so we think you need to have £71.69 per week to live on. If you are over 25 years of age but under pension age you need £72.40 per week to live on. We have added 25% to this amount so we think you need to have £90.50 per week to live on. If you are over pension age you need £148.35 per week to live on. We have added 25% to this amount so we think you need to have £185.44 per week to live on. Depending on the different payments amounts that make up your benefits these figures could be higher.

6. Here are some examples of how we work out how much you would be charged

10. Benefits are money you can get if you are not able to work or need help with day to day living. When the Visiting Assessment Officer comes to do your financial assessment, they can give you some information about benefits. They can also help you to get in touch with an organisation that knows more about those benefits. This section is about getting information about benefits. It is important that you are getting all the benefits that you should be. These benefits are given to you so that you can pay for services that you have now. All the benefits that you should be getting will be included as part of the financial assessment. That is why it is really important to get all of your benefits. • These are some of the benefits you can get. • Income support/pension credit • Jobseekers allowance • Retirement pension • Occupational pension/works pension • Attendance Allowance/ Disability Living care Allowance • Incapacity Benefit/Employment Support Allowance • Widowed parents allowance • Severe Disablement Allowance

11. There are some questions that we get asked a lot. We have put the questions into a document. Please let us know if you would like a copy of the document The document will have some more information on charging. If you would like to get in touch with us please phone the Fairer Charging Team on 0116 3056971 or 0116 3058292 We made this easy to understand using pictures from CHANGE Picture Banks