Explore jargon and terms related to the category "Assessment" and learn more about them.
When it seems that a person requires some care or support to live their life.
The law (Care Act 2014) says that local councils must complete an assessment for any adult with an appearance of need for care and support, even if the council thinks the person might not have eligible needs, and regardless of their financial situation.
An assessment is a way of understanding or judging something.
In social care, there are various different assessments, including a needs assessment, supported self-assessment, carers assessment, young carers assessment, child’s needs assessment, transition assessment, combined assessment, joint assessment, financial assessment, risk assessment
Social workers complete assessments to find out information so they can decide if a person requires care and support to help them live their day-to-day life and do the things that matter to them, and how this support should be funded.
The law (Care Act 2014) says that local councils must undertake an assessment for any adult with an appearance of need for care and support, even if the council thinks the person might not have eligible needs, and regardless of their financial situation.
An assessment completed by a local council, or by an organisation like a carers centre on behalf of the council, to understand the support an unpaid carer might require.
The assessment should seek to understand the carer’s needs for support, if the carer can – and wants to – continue in the caring role, and what the carer wants to achieve in their daily life.
The law (Care Act 2014) says that local councils must undertake an assessment for any carer if it appears that the carer may have require some support, whether currently or in the future.
An assessment of a young person’s needs for care and support.
Local councils must carry out a child’s needs assessment for any young person where there is a significant benefit to the young person, and if they are likely to have needs for care and support after turning 18.
Consideration of ‘significant benefit’ relates to the timing of the assessment, and not to the level of the young person’s needs.
Child’s needs assessments are also referred to as transitions assessments.
The assessment should support the young person and their family to plan for the future.
If a person has eligible needs for care and support, planning their support will include conversations about the best place for the person to live. This might mean the person chooses to move house to live in a different type of home, like Shared Lives, supported living, extra care housing or a care home.
Local councils must make sure the person has a genuine choice of places to live within the type of home identified in their support plan. So, if the person’s needs are best met in a care home, there must be at least one care home available and affordable within the person’s personal budget. This also applies to Shared Lives, supported living and extra care housing.
A person may choose to live in a more expensive home if a third party (usually a family member or friend) – or in certain circumstances the person – is willing and able to pay the additional cost (known as a ‘top-up’). This extra cost must always be optional and never because there is no choice of available and affordable accommodation.
Where an adult’s assessment is combined with a carer’s assessment and/or an assessment relating to a child so that shared needs, circumstances, wishes and feelings are properly heard and understood.
The things that people want to achieve in their day-to-day life.
The main purpose of adult social care is to help people to achieve the outcomes that matter to them in their life.
Assessment conversations should focus on people’s desired outcomes, considering the person’s care and support needs, the impact of their needs on their wellbeing, and whether support to meet these needs will help the person to achieve the things that matter to them.
When a person is allowed to get or do something because certain things apply to them.
Local councils determine whether people’s have eligible needs for care and support using the national eligibility threshold set out in the Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015.
The way local councils decide whether an adult has eligible needs for care and support.
Local councils must consider whether:
– the adult’s needs arise from or are related to a physical or mental impairment or illness
– as a result of the adult’s needs, they are unable to achieve 2 or more specified outcomes, and
– because they can’t achieve these outcomes there is, or there is likely to be, a big impact on their wellbeing
An adult’s needs are only eligible where they meet all 3 of these conditions.
The needs a person has for care and support that their local council is required by law to meet. Under the Care Act 2014, councils have to follow the national minimum eligibility threshold to determine people’s eligible needs.
An adult’s needs are ‘eligible needs’ if they meet the eligibility criteria, they are not being met by a carer, and the adult is ordinarily resident or present in the local council area.
The way local councils work out how much a person can afford to pay towards the cost of their care and support.
The financial assessment usually happens after the assessment of the person’s care and support needs. If it happens at the same time, it must not influence the needs assessment.
The first time a person connects with their local council to request some support, and the council begins to collect information about them and/or the person they are making contact about. The contact could be over the telephone, by email, by textphone, via an online form or ChatBot, or face-to-face in a council office, hospital, community venue or other location.
This is when the local council begins to assess the person’s needs for care and support. The Care Act 2014 guidance says that from the person’s very first contact with the council, they must be given as much information as possible about the assessment process, in an accessible format. Councils should also consider the person’s need for independent advocacy from this stage.
A way of understanding a person’s ability to manage everyday tasks, and working out how much help and support someone might need.
Where organisations work together to coordinate conversations with people requiring support, to develop a shared understanding and shared plans, and avoid people having to have lots of different assessments.
Care and support arranged or funded by both the NHS and social care, following a person’s needs assessment.
People can draw on care and support arranged or funded jointly in their own home, a nursing or care home, or by way of a joint personal budget.
People may have a joint package of care if they have health needs as well as care and support needs. If their main need is for health care, this is known as a primary health need and they may be entitled to continuing health care.
The process of identifying the future health, care and wellbeing needs of the population in a particular area, and planning services to help meet those needs. This process is led by local councils, working with the NHS and private and voluntary organisations in specific areas.
Where a local council treats a person as if a financial assessment has been carried out, because the council is satisfied that the person can provide evidence to show that they can afford to (and are willing to) pay the full cost of their care and support.
Local councils may also consider a light-touch financial assessment where there is a very small cost for a service which the person is clearly able to meet, or where a person receives benefits which demonstrate they would not be able to contribute towards the cost of their care and support.
The basic level a person’s care and support needs must reach before their local council has a legal duty to meet them.
The Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015 set the national minimum eligibility threshold for meeting people’s care and support needs and carers’ support needs. It was introduced to make decision making about eligibility clearer, and the same across different areas.
The threshold is based on identifying how a person’s needs affect their ability to achieve relevant outcomes, and how this impacts on their wellbeing. All councils must comply with the national threshold.
The way local councils understand a person’s care and support needs.
Local councils must carry out a needs assessment for any adult who appears to need care and support, whether or not the council thinks the person has eligible needs and regardless of their financial situation.
If a person chooses not to have a needs assessment, their local council is not required by law to complete one, unless the council identifies that the person lacks mental capacity and that carrying out a needs assessment would be in their best interest.
The place where a person usually lives.
Ordinary residence is one of the key tests which must be met to establish whether a local council is required to meet a person’s eligible needs.
The test for ordinary residence applies differently in relation to adults with needs for care and support and carers. For adults with care and support needs, the local council where the adult usually lives will be responsible for meeting their eligible needs. For carers, however, the responsible local council will be the one where the adult who draws on support from the carer usually lives.
Local councils also have the power to meet a person’s urgent needs for care and support even if they are not an ordinary resident in the council’s area, or before ordinary residence has been determined.
An outcome is something that a person, team, service or organisation would like to achieve or something they want to happen.
The main purpose of adult social care is to help people to achieve the outcomes that matter to them in their life.
Two different types of outcomes are described in the Care Act 2014 guidance.
‘Desired outcomes’ are defined by the person. They are the things people want to achieve in their day-to-day life.
‘Specified outcomes’ are defined by the eligibility regulations. They are the things that local councils must consider to determine whether a person has eligible needs for care and support.
Gathering and sharing information before a planned operation or procedure. A pre-assessment could include a conversation with a health care worker, tests or a questionnaire.
An assessment that is completed in the least intrusive way, based on the person’s situation and what the person would like to happen.
For example, a local council might complete a needs assessment by phone or online, or might choose to carry out a ‘light touch’ financial assessment.
A further assessment of a person’s needs or finances that a local council may carry out if the person has already had an assessment and a review identifies that the person’s needs or circumstances have changed.
A re-assessment should be a proportionate assessment that considers what is already known about the person. Local councils cannot re-assess a person’s care and support needs without first completing a review and deciding that changes to the person’s care and support plan are necessary.
Where an adult who appears to need care and support chooses not to have an assessment, for example because they feel they do not need or want support.
Local councils do not have to carry out an assessment if a person chooses not to have one, unless the council identifies that the adult lacks capacity to make a decision about the assessment and that it would be in the adult’s best interests to have one. If the adult is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse and neglect councils must carry out as much of an assessment as possible.
A chance for people with care and support plans or support plans to reflect on what is working, what’s not working and what might need to change.
A review may lead to a re-assessment if the person’s care and support needs have changed.
Reviews must not be used as a way of reducing the level of a person’s personal budget.
A way of considering the possibility of something bad or negative happening, and how risks can be understood and managed.
A form or questionnaire that a person completes themselves with information about them, their life, what’s important to them and the support they need. The assessment should provide an accurate and complete reflection of the person’s needs, the outcomes they want to achieve and the impact of their needs on their wellbeing.
The person may draw on support from a social care worker or an advocate to complete the assessment.
The person’s local council will use the information provided in a self-assessment to determine whether the person is eligible for care and support.
Local councils decide whether a person has eligible needs for care and support by looking at the impact of their care and support needs on their ability to do everyday things, and how much this affects their wellbeing.
The person’s needs will be determined to have a big effect on their wellbeing if they have a lot of difficulty in achieving at least one of the outcomes specified in the Care Act 2014 eligibility criteria, or some difficulty in achieving several of the outcomes.
Because people’s needs affect different people in different ways, and different things are important to people, needs and circumstances that create a significant impact on the wellbeing of one person may not have the same effect on someone else.
An attempt to coordinate assessment and care planning across the NHS and councils introduced in the National Service Framework for Older People in 2001.
A range of things set out in the Eligibility Regulations that local councils must consider when working out whether a person is eligible for care and support.
The specified outcomes are:
a) managing and maintaining nutrition
b) maintaining personal hygiene
c) managing toilet needs
d) being appropriately clothed
e) maintaining a habitable home environment
f) being able to make use of the home safely
g) developing and maintaining family or other personal relationships
h) accessing and engaging in work, training, education or volunteering
i) making use of necessary facilities or services in the local community including public transport and recreational facilities or services
j) carrying out any caring responsibilities the adult has for a child
Local councils must consider whether the person is unable to achieve 2 or more of these outcomes when making the eligibility determination.
‘Being unable’ does not just mean the person can’t do these things without help. It also means the person can do these things, but doing so causes them a lot of pain, distress or anxiety, it’s dangerous, or it takes a lot longer than would normally be expected.
An assessment that looks first at what matters to people, their gifts and potential, and the support they have around them in their family and community, rather than focusing on problems and needs.
An assessment that is carried out jointly between a person who requires care and support and the local council.
A supported self assessment means the person has more control, as they complete a self assessment then their local council checks their assessment by asking for the views of other people who are part of the person’s support network, or who know the person through a paid role, for example a doctor, district nurse, housing officer or prison worker.
An amount of a person’s capital that is calculated as income during assessments for welfare benefits or financial assessments for care and support.
People working for local councils, like social workers, complete transitions assessments with young people preparing for their adult life. The assessments are an opportunity to discuss what is important to the young person and to provide them and their families with information to help them make plans.
The law (Care Act 2014) says that local councils must undertake a transitions assessment when someone is likely to have needs for care and support (or support as a carer) under the Care Act when they or the person they support turns 18.
Transition assessments should take place at the right time for the young person or carer and at a point when the local council can be reasonably confident about what the young person’s or carer’s needs for care or support will look like after the young person in question turns 18. There is no set age when young people reach this point; every young person and their family are different, and as such, transition assessments should take place when it is most appropriate for them.
A twelve week period when a local council must not include the value of a person’s main or only home in a financial assessment to calculate how much the person can afford to pay towards the cost of their care and support.
Charging arrangements for care and support aim to make sure people don’t have to sell their home at a time of crisis. The 12-week disregard gives people time to decide how to meet their contribution towards the cost of their care and support.
The 12-week disregard applies when:
a) the person first moves in to a care home on a permanent basis, or
b) when a separate property disregard ends unexpectedly.
Local councils may also choose to apply the 12-week disregard if there is a sudden change to the person’s financial circumstances.
An assessment completed by a local council, or by an organisation like a Carers Centre on behalf of the council, to understand the support a young carer might need.
Where a young carer is identified, the local council must undertake a young carer’s assessment under part 3 of the Children Act 1989. Local councils should also consider how supporting the adult who requires care and support can prevent the young carer from under taking excessive or inappropriate care and support responsibilities.