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Assessing the Needs of Older People
Assessment of your
needs
Before we can help you, we need to carry
out an assessment of your care needs.
You may hear this assessment referred to as a need
assessment or a care assessment.
In the past, local authorities may have carried out assessments
without involving other services such as the health service, which
also may have some responsibility for helping you.
Under the Government's Single Assessment Process for Older People
(SAP), the public services responsible for assessing your social
care, health, housing and other needs should work together to
reduce duplication of effort. This means you won't be asked the
same questions over and over again.
The SAP does not replace our existing responsibilities and your
legal entitlements to help from social services are unchanged.
After the care assessment, we will decide whether or not we can
provide or arrange community care services for you under our
eligibility criteria for adult social care services.
Eligibility criteria are locally set rules on what type of needs
the local authority will meet. Each authority sets its own
eligibility criteria but these should comply with Fair Access to
Care Services (FACS) guidance, which was issued by the Government
to promote fairness and consistency in the eligibility criteria and
assessment processes related to adult social care services. Newham
complies with this standard.
Having established that we should arrange or provide services for
you, we will then carry out a financial assessment to establish how
much you should contribute towards the cost of your
services. |