Your views on changes to Adult Social Care Charging Policy – Charging an arrangement fee for people who self-fund their social care

Overview

The Council faces difficult decisions to deliver on its ambitions for the people of Norfolk against a difficult economic climate and more than a decade of reduced funding. Each year, the Council reviews its budget and proposes the savings it will need to make for the following year to balance its budget.

We conducted our annual budget and council tax consultation for 2024/25 between October and December 2023. However, the Government’s autumn statement and provisional funding settlement, which followed our budget consultation, set out a worse funding position for local authorities than had previously been anticipated. As a result, the Council is £4m worse off than it had expected to be.

For 2024/25 the Council has proposed £41.5m of new savings which may require further consultation. This is one of those consultations. The Council is doing its best to protect key services, but faced with rising costs, rising demand and under-funding, it must make difficult decisions to balance the books.

In this consultation we are asking for your views on our proposal to charge an arrangement fee to people who self-fund their social care for sourcing, contracting and invoicing on their behalf where we have a duty to meet that person’s needs.

The proposed change would bring the council in line with many other authorities who apply the guidance in the Care Act 2014 and charge an arrangement fee to self-funders and would affect self-funders above the age of 18. 

The council is proposing this in order to manage its finances, following a lower-than-expected settlement from the government. It is also struggling to meet growing demand, greater complexity of need and growing costs brought about by both inflation and the increase in the National Living Wage.

This will mean that people who self-fund their care where we have a duty to arrange their care will be charged an arrangement fee.

We are also consulting on proposals to change our Adult Social Care non-residential care charging policy, and this can be viewed here. 

Why your views matter

We want to find out what people think about our proposal to charge an arrangement fee for people who self-fund their social care

We are consulting through:

-           The online consultation, which is also available as a paper copy

-           Email /Letter to key stakeholders and partners

-           Email /Letter to service users

-           Meetings with service users

We are consulting from 19 February to 17 May 2024. Please note that if we receive any consultation responses after this date, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to take them into account.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about our proposals.

If you need a copy of this consultation document in a different format, please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk, call 0344 800 8020 or Text Relay on 18001 0344 800 8020 (textphone) and we will do our best to help.

The consultation should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.