Explains your rights to social care, and how this differs from healthcare. Includes information on eligibility, needs assessments, financial assessments, and how local authorities may meet your needs.
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If the local authority has decided that you have eligible needs for care and support, then it will plan with you what support you can be given. You should be involved in the care and support planning process, and the plan should meet your needs and achieve the outcomes that you want.
The law says that the local authority must:
The law is clear that you must be genuinely involved in planning your care and support. This means that:
The process is described as 'person-centred' and 'person-led'.
The plan belongs to you and the planning process should be built around your wishes and feelings and your needs, values and aspirations. The law says that the local authority must take all reasonable steps to reach agreement with you about how to meet your needs.
In care and support planning, the local authority should not assume that you lack capacity to make decisions. But if it thinks that you may lack capacity, it should carry out a capacity assessment relating to the decisions to be made.
If you lack capacity to make care planning decisions, then you may be supported by an appropriate person like a:
If you don't have someone to support you, the local authority should appoint an independent advocate to assist, support and represent you.
Your care and support plan should set out:
Someone from the local authority will work with you to prepare it.
The laws of England and Wales are slightly different on what care and support plans must cover.
If you're in England, your care and support plan will set out:
If you're in Wales, your care and support plan will set out:
The law says that there must be a named individual to coordinate how the plan is going to be prepared, completed, reviewed, delivered and revised.
Yes. If appropriate, care and support plans can be combined with plans for other people or plans provided by different organisations. So, for example, you may have plans that relate to your healthcare, such as under the Care Programme Approach (CPA) or Care and Treatment Planning (CTP). Or there may be plans involving other people, such as another member of your household or your carer, that are relevant to your care and support.
Combining your care and support plan with other plans may reduce duplication of work, but it's important that there is clarity. At the start of the care and support planning process, the local authority should check whether you have plans with other agencies. If there is a combined plan, one organisation should take the lead on monitoring your plan and you should be given the name of a lead professional to be your point of contact.
Yes – your needs may change over time, so it's essential that your plan is kept under review and changed if necessary. However, reviews of your care and support plan should not be used as a way to make cuts to services provided to you.
The purpose of reviewing your plans is to:
Your care and support plan should be reviewed:
However, it might be reviewed more frequently if:
You have the right to request a review of your care and support plan. If your request is reasonable, the local authority should carry out the review within a reasonable time.
There must be a review if your care and support plan is going to be closed.
The way the review is carried out should be agreed with you and should be appropriate to your circumstances. It can be carried out in a number of ways:
The local authority must involve you when carrying out the review. If you'll have difficulty involving yourself in the review process, then the local authority should appoint an independent advocate for you. It should also involve:
The review should focus on matters such as:
If there are no changes needed, then your care and support plan will continue as before.
Your plan will be revised if there is a need to make changes to it. These may be minor or may involve considerable changes. When revising your care and support plan, the local authority will look at the same issues as it would when it assesses your needs.
You must be involved in any decision to revise your care and support plan, as should your carer and family if this is what you want. The local authority should provide you with an advocate if you have difficulty being involved in the process.
Care and Treatment Planning is a way that secondary mental health services are assessed, planned, coordinated and reviewed for someone that lives in Wales. It comes from a law called the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010.
Secondary mental health services include the community mental health team (CMHT), assertive outreach team and early intervention team.
You should get:
See our pages on leaving hospital for more information.
See our full list of legal terms.The Care Programme Approach (CPA) is a way that secondary mental health services are assessed, planned, coordinated and reviewed for someone that lives in England (see: secondary care).
Secondary mental health services include the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT), Assertive Outreach Team and Early Intervention Team.
You should get:
See our pages on leaving hospital for more information.
See our full list of legal terms.This information was published in February 2018. We will revise it in 2020.
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