Hi everyone, my name is Nick and I’m a social worker working in Leeds.

So a needs assessment is where a social worker will have a conversation with you about what your social care needs are.

So the, the formal word to describe an assessment for your social care needs is a Care Act Assessment but in different local authorities, it might go by different names such as in Leeds where I work it’s called a Conversation Record and then in other local authorities it’s sometimes called a Needs Assessment. But ultimately all these assessments are the same thing and it’s where the social worker is having a conversation with you and potentially your loved one, if they’re present, and basically just assessing what your needs are and what support can be put in place to improve your life.

So in a needs assessment, the social worker will be trying to, first of all, look at what support you already have in place. So this might be support from family. It might also be support from other agencies such as home care. And they’ll also look at your health conditions, both physical and mental health and explore the ways in which these conditions might impact upon areas such as getting washed and dressed, meal preparation, mobility and accessing the community.

It’s worth it just to know what services are available because so many people don’t actually know what’s out there to actually help them so a lot of the time, you know, people might be struggling so they might be struggling with things like getting washed and dressed or they might feel quite isolated and either they don’t feel confident accessing support or they don’t even know that the support’s out there. So I suppose it’s to kind of, it’s on the one hand it is assessing their needs but as well as assessing it’s also providing information around what’s available. So it’s not just really assessing, it’s also informing as well.