About our adult social care charges consultation
Consultation closed: Monday, 20 April 2020
We provide adult social care services to approximately 3,400 residents, this includes providing services like residential care and home care.
When residents need adult social care, as well as assessing their care needs, we also assess their income to decide how much they pay towards their care. This is known as means testing. Some people don’t pay anything, and we pick up all of the cost; some people pay a contribution and some people pay for all of their care (these people are known as self-funders).
We set out what and how customers need to pay in the Adult Social Care Charging Policy. Whilst this is based on national legislation, this policy has not been fundamentally reviewed for 10 years and now needs to be updated and reviewed.
How our services are funded has changed. 10 years ago, a quarter of our funding came from central government but that has now stopped, and we are expected to fund services through the Council Tax we collect.
Over a third of our budget is spent on adult social care services. As more people are living longer and often with complex needs, the demand for adult social care is increasing along with the cost of providing these services.
Unfortunately, it is no longer sustainable for us to continue absorbing these increasing costs. Therefore, we have to make some tough decisions about what we will fund and what we will charge for. As part of this we are proposing some changes to the fees and charges for adult social care.
There are national government guidelines that we have to abide by to ensure we are not charging people beyond what is reasonable for care and support and that everyone is fairly financially assessed and charged for care. Equally, though, the national principles mean that the charging policy has to be financially sustainable for the council in the long-term.
The changes enable us to:
- ensure fairness in assessing everyone consistently
- cover administration fees we incur
- recover the full cost of discretionary services we provide at the request of customers
- bring some charges in line with central government standards and therefore consistent with other local authorities
The following information explains the proposed changes and how you can give your feedback.
A glossary of key terms can be found in appendix A.
Need some help?
Give us a call or email us:
Telephone: 0300 300 8303
Email: consultations@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk