Your views on our proposal to change the way we work out how much people pay towards the cost of their adult social care services

Overview

We currently spend around £1m each day on adult social services and are planning to increase the overall amount we spend on adult social services in 2017/18.   However, the demands on adult social care continue to change so even with the investment we are making in services we still have savings to find if we are to continue to meet people's care needs.

Those who do receive support from the Council often need complex care packages, delivered in their own homes, to support and maintain their quality of life.  We have to get the right balance between spending money on people’s existing care needs and spending money that helps people live well and independently in the community.

To work out how much people need to pay towards their adult social care services, we carry out a financial assessment. We are considering changing a part of the financial assessment for non-residential care called disability related expenditure.

We would like to change our approach so that we are more consistent with other local authorities, better reflect what people are spending and help the County Council save money at a time when our budget is under great pressure.

The effect of the proposal we are consulting about is to reduce the amount of money automatically disregarded for disability related expenditure.  If you currently receive the benefit of the £15 per week disregard from your care costs, but do not actually incur this much disability related expenditure, the amount of money you contribute towards the costs of your care may increase.

Why your views matter

We are looking at all of our services to see how we can do the best we can for people with the limited money that we have to spend.

When people pay for their care we look at what they can afford to pay. Some people have to pay more money for things because of their disability, illness or mental health condition.  We call this disability related expenditure or DRE. 

We take the amount people spend on disability related expenditure into account when we work out how much people have to pay towards their non-residential care.  Disability related expenditure reduces the amount we ask people to pay.  We call this reduction a ‘disregard’ or an ‘allowance’.

We are proposing to change the amount we automatically allow for disability related expenditure from £15.00 a week to £7.50 a week.

If our proposal went ahead we would save £1.18m in 2017/18 and £0.23m in 2018/19.

We want to find out what people think about our proposal and how it might affect them if it went ahead.

We are consulting through:

- Individual letters to everyone we think might be directly affected by our proposals

- Follow-up calls with a number of service users for a more in-depth conversation

-  Discussions with groups and organisations that represent the views of people who use our services

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

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.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document on paper or in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk

What happens next

We will take a report to Full Council on 20 February 2017.  The report will feedback what people have told us about the potential impact of our proposal.  Members will use this as part of the evidence they take into account when making a decision about what savings to make.