Assessment of your care needs

Overview Why you might need it How to get it Who’s involved What happens during the assessment? Support you can get What it costs What happens after the assessment Further information

What happens during the assessment?

The care professional carrying out the assessment will arrange to visit you and will ask questions to help them understand:

• what you have difficulty in doing
• what you’d like to be able to do
• what help you already get from family, friends or other carers
• what your care needs are
• how suitable your home is for your needs
• if you have specialist needs due to disability or health conditions
• any risks to your health and wellbeing if you don’t get appropriate support

The care professional will talk to you about what matters most to you and help look at ways of achieving these outcomes.

They’ll fill in forms with the information you give and ask you to sign them. You’ll be asked to sign a form giving your consent for information to be shared with other professionals.

The assessment may involve more than one visit. All of the information will go into creating your care plan, which sets out how your needs may be met.

This way of finding out what support you need is called self-directed support. This means that you and your carer can choose what support is needed and how it’s provided.

Find out more about self-directed support