Short Term Care and Respite Care

Carers of Adults
If you have a friend or family member with a learning disability to whom you provide care (even if you do not provide this care full time) you may be entitled to a carer’s assessment . Under the Care Act 2014 anyone who is a carer for an adult and who appears to have a need for support is entitled to have a carer’s assessment.

The carer’s assessment is carried out by your local authority . Each local authority will have its own process for carrying out an assessment (for example some do the assessment online, whereas other local authorities will carry out a face to face assessment).

The assessment should identify the support needs of the carer and how those needs can be met. Following the assessment you will receive a decision, which may signpost you to other organisations that can provide you with support. The assessment should identify if you have eligible needs i.e. those that the local authority has a legal obligation to meet. If you have eligible needs the local 
authority should consider what provision is available locally to meet those needs.

You will have eligible needs if:

• Your needs are the result of you providing necessary care;
• Your caring role has an effect on you;
• There is, or is likely to be, a significant impact on your wellbeing.

If you have eligible needs your local authority is legally obliged to meet those needs. However, you should remember that local authorities are entitled to charge for social services that they provide. The local authority can meet your eligible needs in a number of ways:

Provide services to you such as:

• Gym memberships
• Help with transport costs, such as taxi fares or driving lessons
• Costs for a car where transport was crucial, such as repairs and insurance
• Technology to support you, such as a mobile phone, computer where it is not possible to access computer services elsewhere
• Help with housework or gardening
• Provide services to the person that you care for so that you are able to have time away from caring to do other things.

Examples are to provide:

• Short term residential care for the person with a learning disability
• Day centres
• Carer in the home
• Holidays

Some ‘local authorities’ provide services to carers for free. However, you may be assessed to see if you need to contribute towards the costs of the services being provided to you. If you are required to pay the full cost of the services you are not obliged to accept them from the local authority.

If the service is being provided to the person that you care for – for example they attend a day centre so that you can have a day to yourself then as that service is being provided to them, you as their carer should not have to pay towards the service.

The person receiving the care may be charged for the service.

The person receiving the care may choose to use direct payments to pay for the service.

If the respite care is in the form of a short stay in a care home then the person receiving the care can only use direct payments to pay for the care home provided that in any twelve month period they do not stay there for more than four weeks at a time or if two stays are less than four weeks apart that those two stays do not total four or more weeks.

People can receive additional weeks in a care home once they have reached the four week maximum but they cannot purchase the stay using their direct payments. If the local authority and the person with the learning disability agree that a longer stay is needed then the local authority can arrange and fund stays for that person. There is no restriction on the length of time for which the local authority may arrange such accommodation for someone. However, if a person is
spending a lot of time in care homes the local authority may need to conduct a review of their care plan to make sure that it still meets needs.

If a person is staying in a care home on a temporary basis a local authority may 
choose to assess and charge them based on the rules for care or support arranged 
other than in a care home, i.e. so their main home is not taken into account when 
calculating how much they should be contributing.

If you think that the local authority did not carry out the assessment correctly then you could challenge the decision and ask for the assessment to be carried out again. If you need any further advice about how to do this please contact the Learning Disability Helpline.

If you do not have grounds to challenge the local authority’s decision, for example because there are other reasons why you need the support rather than just because of your caring obligations, then you could consider other ways of accessing respite care.

For example:
Are there friends or family members who could care for the person with the 
learning disability so that you can have a break?

Some charities will help to fund short breaks or holidays for carers.

For example, the Carers Trust provides grants. 

Benevolent funds for particular trades or professions may help to fund respite for carers. Use the Turn2us grants search tool to see if there are any charitable organisations that could help to fund respite for you.

You could consider privately funding respite care. However, depending on the type of care that you want and the needs of the person that you care for this could be very expensive. Costs of any privately arranged care services required, including respite care can be included as a disability related expense for the purposes of a financial assessment, so if you or the person that you care for are incurring costs for respite you should keep receipts and a record of those costs so that they can be included in any financial charges assessments that either of you may have.

You do not have to receive the respite care directly from the local authority. You could ask for direct payments so that you can purchase the service from another source. Therefore, if the local authority has cut a service or does not provide a service for which you have an eligible need you could try to find out if there is anywhere else that provides that service.

Carers of children with a disability are entitled to a parent carer’s assessment at any time. If you are found to have an eligible need for respite care then you will not be charged for this service.
If your child needs a service, such as overnight care or a stay in a residential home so that you can have some respite then this will be provided without charge.