I’m Sharon Calline I’m the income services manager at City of York council and my job description basically covers the assessment of people who are going to get social care. A financial assessment is something we do for customers who meet this social care and eligibility criteria. It’s a means tested assessment, but essentially if you’ve got a significant amount of capital sat in bank accounts, building societies, post office, stocks and shares all that gets added together, and if you’re above the higher capital limit, then you are self-funder.

I mean I would always recommend self-funders to get professional advice particularly around planning for the funding of care because it may be that they’ve got enough assets that they never have to come to a local authority. So, you know that sort of advice can be invaluable, particularly if you’ve got quite a lot of money, you can make your money work really well for you, and obviously plan earlier, to how you want that money to be to be used at a later date.

So, if somebody comes to us because their capital is reducing, what we do is we send them some information out and one of the team will give the customer or a relative to a phone call or we’ll do a Zoom meeting, for example. And we ask them to provide information about their income, their capital, their bank accounts, have they got any stocks and shares and investments, any property they own.

We can give you advice. We can give you lots of information and advice, but actually to get the assessment done has to come through social services.

I would always recommend having a needs assessment done, whether you’re in need of council funding or not, so local authority funding. Everybody who has need, everybody is entitled to a needs assessment. So what the needs assessment does it just basically sets out what your specific needs are and particularly if you’re going into a care home as a self-funder, you know, it may be too early, so you may not be at that point where you need to have that support.

And basically deferred payment is like mortgage you agree for the local authority to put a charge over your property and they will then contribute to your care or your care home and the care costs over and above your income. So, for example, you’re in a care home that costs 1000 pounds and you were paying 250 pound a week from your income, the 750 pound could be offset against your property, your asset, through a deferred payment agreement.