A Guide to Charges for Care

for adults in Suffolk 2010/11

A great place to be independent

www.suffolk.gov.uk
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11

Contents
Section one – care in your own home or a day centre
Page 3 Care arranged by Suffolk County Council.
How do you know if you qualify for care services?

Page 6 What will I have to pay for home care, day care
and transport?

Section two – care in a residential or nursing home.

Page 8 Do I have to pay for a short term/respite stay in a
Residential or nursing care home?

Page 8 How will you work out what I have to pay for my
residential or nursing home?

Page 11 I own my own home – will this be taken into

account?

Page 14 Adult and Community Services standard contract

rates 2010/11

Page 14 More information

Page 14 What will I pay for equipment and meals?

Page 15 What if I have a query about my charges?

Page 16 How to contact Adult and Community Services

2
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
Suffolk County Council arranges a wide variety of care
services including:
Care in a residential or nursing home
Care in your own home
Care in a day centre
A direct payment so you can arrange your own care
Meals
Special equipment to make your life easier
You may have to pay something towards some of these services
but some of them are free. How much you pay towards the cost of
your care is worked out using your income, savings and capital.
Before we can arrange services for you, you will be assessed by
a member of our Adult and Community Services staff. The person
doing the assessment will explain how much you might have to
pay towards the cost of your service and will discuss ways that
you can pay.

Section one – care in your own

home or a day centre
Care arranged by Suffolk County Council
How do you know if you qualify for care
services?
You need to arrange an assessment to work out how much money
you can get for services to be provided for you or for you to buy
your own services. You can choose to have your services arranged
for you or to have money instead so that you can arrange your own
care. This money is known as a direct payment.
Direct payments may be given for any community care service.
They cannot be given for permanent residential or nursing care.
The person arranging your care or your direct payment will also
make sure that you have a form for your financial assessment (an
AF1) to find out how much you will have to pay towards the care
that you need.
3
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
Most people do not have to pay the full cost of the care that they
receive, and some people do not have to pay anything at all.
However, if we work out that you have to pay the full cost of your
care, you will not be able to get a direct payment.
You can arrange a care assessment by contacting Customer First
(see page 16 for details). If you have health care as well as social
care needs the person doing the assessment will work closely with
NHS staff to work out what help you need.
You do not have to pay for the assessment of your needs –
assessments are free.
What is the Homefirst Service?
Homefirst is a special service that you may get after you have
been discharged from hospital or at the start of your care service.
Homefirst is a service that provides an ongoing assessment of
your needs until they are stable. While you are under their
assessment the service will be free.
When the assessment part of the service is over, if the Homefirst
team continue to provide your standard care provision, it will then
be charged for.
How much you pay towards the cost of this care will be worked
out in the financial assessment.
The financial assessment
After your care assessment you will be asked to complete a
Financial Declaration Form (AF1). You need to return this form to
us within 14 days. If you are getting either a homecare or a
daycare service, transport or a direct payment you will be offered
a visit from one of our specialist officers who will help you (and
your carer) to claim any benefits that you are able to get that you
are not getting already.
The visiting officer should also be able to tell you approximately
how much you will have to pay towards the cost of your care at
the visit if they have all the information from you that they need to
work this out.
4
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
How do we work out how much you have to pay
towards the cost of your non residential care?
If you are going into a residential or nursing care home, even just
for a short stay, you need to read the information on page 8.
We ask you for information about your income, savings and
capital. We use this information to work out how much you have
to pay towards the cost of your care services.
Some income is ignored when we work out how much you have
to pay – for instance any earnings that you may have or Disability
Living Allowance mobility component.
Some savings and capital are also ignored when we work out
how much you have to pay.
Please give us details of all your income and savings and capital
even though we may ignore some of these.
If you have savings or capital over £23,250 you will have to pay
the full cost of your care. The value of the home that you normally
live in is ignored.
You do not have to tell us the amount of your savings/capital, but
if you do not do so we will charge you the full cost of your care.
If your savings and capital are under £23,250 we will work out
how much you have to pay towards the cost of your care based
on your income and an assumed income from savings that you
have over £14,250.
If you are one of a couple we will work out how much you have to
pay towards the cost of your care based on your income and
savings alone, or your combined income with your partner. We
will let you know which type of assessment will mean that you
pay the least towards the cost of your care.
This is how we work out how much you have to pay
towards the cost of your care
Step one If your weekly income is under £165.75 you will not
pay anything towards the cost of your care. If your
income is over £165.75 please go to step two. 5
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
Step two If you get Attendance Allowance or Disability
Living Allowance care component, we ignore
another £25 per week of your income. This is to
allow for your ‘disability related expenses’.
If you think that you have extra expenses that are
directly related to your illness or disability that are
more than £25 per week, please tell us about
these on the AF1 form, as we may be able to
ignore more than £25 in certain circumstances.
Step three If you have any remaining income above £165.75,
the most that you will be asked to pay is 80% of
this amount.
Have a look at the examples on pages 7 and 8. They might help
to make this easier to understand.
After the financial assessment has been done you will be sent a
letter telling you how much, if anything, you will have to pay
towards the cost of your care, and about how and when the
charges will be collected.

What will I have to pay for home care, day

care and transport?
If you have to pay the full cost of your care it is worked out
as follows:
Home care £13.90 per hour. The minimum charge is for half an
hour in most cases. If you have more than one carer
at a time, you will be charged the hourly rate for
each carer.
Day centre £15 per session. A session is any single period of
time that you spend at one day centre.
Transport £1.50 per single journey. This only applies to transport
that is arranged for you by Adult and Community
Services as part of your assessment.

6
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
These four examples might help to explain how we work out
how much you have to pay towards the cost of your care.
Joan
Joan is 78 years old and she lives alone. She gets Retirement Pension
and Pension Credit Guarantee totalling £132.60 per week. She has
no savings.
As her income is under £165.75 per week she will not have to pay
anything towards the cost of her care.
Simon
Simon is 34 years old and lives in a house that he shares with
friends. He works for 12 hours per week and gets paid £84 per
week. He also gets Incapacity Benefit of £106.40 per week and
Disability Living Allowance care Component of £47.80 and
mobility component of £49.85.
His earnings and Disability Living Allowance mobility component
are ignored.
His other income of £154.20 is under £165.75 per week so he
will not have to pay anything towards the cost of the care that
he receives.
Mo
Mo is 69 years old. She has Retirement Pension of £97.65 per
week and an occupational pension from her late husband of
£88.38 per week. She gets Attendance Allowance paid at the
higher rate of £71.40. She has savings of £11,000.
She has nine hours homecare a week. The full cost of this would
be £125.10 per week.
Her savings are ignored as they are under £14,250, and we
only count the lower rate of Attendance Allowance of £47.80 as
income. Therefore the income we count comes to £233.83
per week.
We ignore £165.75 of this, leaving £68.08. We then ignore a
further £25 as she gets Attendance Allowance, leaving £43.08.
7
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
We will only use 80% of this figure, so £34.46 is what she pays
towards the cost of her care each week.
Leonard
Leonard chooses to have his care arranged by Suffolk County
Council. He has home care for ten and half hours a week. He has
savings of £28,500. Until his savings reduce to under £23,250, he
will pay the full cost of his care which is £145.95 per week.
What happens if I cannot afford to pay towards the
cost of my care?
Under certain exceptional circumstances, we may be able to
reduce or waive charges if you cannot afford to pay them. Ask the
person arranging your care for further information or write to Adult
and Community Services and explain why you cannot afford to
pay (see pages 15 and 16 for address and telephone number).

Section two – care in a

residential or nursing home.
Do I have to pay for a short term/respite stay
in a residential or nursing care home?
If your stay in a residential or nursing care home is only for a
short period of time, for example while your carer is on holiday or
in hospital, you will still have to pay for your care.
We will calculate your charges in a similar way to that described
in the following pages.
For short term stays we ignore the value of your house when we
work out the amount of your savings and capital and we also may
also take account of ongoing costs of your home such as standing
charges for electricity or gas, water rates and council tax.

How will you work out what I have to pay for

my residential or nursing home?
If we have decided that you need care in a residential or nursing
8
care home, but you cannot afford to pay the full cost, the person
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
who is arranging your care will give you a financial assessment
form (AF1) for you to give us information about your income and
any savings/capital that you may have.
We will use this information to work out how much you will have
to pay towards the cost of your residential or nursing home.
The person who is arranging your care should be able to tell you
how you can pay your contribution towards the cost of your care.
If we have assessed you as needing to live in residential or
nursing care home, but you choose to live in a home which costs
more than the ‘standard contract rate’ that we would normally pay
(see page 14), you will need to find a friend, relative or charity
who are able to pay the additional cost for you. This is called a
‘third party top-up’.
We will not meet the ‘extra cost’ even if you have lived in that
home for a number of years.
If you cannot find someone to help you to meet the extra cost,
you may have to move.
You cannot ‘top up’ out of your own savings unless you are within
the 12 week property disregard period or enter into a ‘deferred
payment arrangement’ (see page 13).
The actual amount you have to pay towards the cost of your care
will be worked out using your income, savings and capital that
you have (including the value your home, if you own it and have
lived there alone).
If you have a private/occupational pension and you are married
or in a civil partnership, we will only take half of the pension into
account when working out how much you should pay.
If you choose services in your residential or nursing care home
which are extras that we do not usually pay for, you can pay for
them yourself or find a friend, relative or charity to pay for them.
If you have enough private income to pay for your own residential
or nursing care home fees, you can choose not to have an Adult
and Community Services assessment and you do not need to
involve us if you do not want to. 9
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
How do I find a residential or nursing home?
You can obtain a list of registered care homes in your area
by contacting:
Care Quality Commission
National Correspondence
Citygate
Gallowgate
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 4PA
Telephone: 03000 616161
Email: enquiries@cqc.org.uk
www.cqc.org.uk/registeredservicesdirectory/rsquicksearch.asp
We have negotiated a standard contract rate with some of the
homes and the rates are listed on page 14.
How much am I likely to have to pay towards the
cost of my residential or nursing home?
Any nursing component of your care (called the FNC) will be met
by the Health Authority, and will be paid direct to the Care Home.
The figures quoted on page 14 do not include this contribution
from the Health Authority.
You will pay the full charge for care if:
Your weekly income (after tax) is more than the cost of the
residential or nursing care home (some income such as
earnings and the mobility component of Disability Living
Allowance is ignored) or
You have more than £23,250 in savings and/or capital (we
include the value of your home if you own it and live there by
yourself – see page 11).
If your savings and capital are close to £23,250, it is a
good idea to ask us to work out how much you will have to
pay in advance for when your savings and capital fall below
that figure.

10
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
You will pay less than the full charge if:
You have less than £23,250 but more than £14,250 in savings
and capital.
We will take your income and some of your capital or savings into
account and we will pay the difference between this and the cost
of your place in the home, up to the standard contract rate for
your care needs. Savings of less than £14,250 will be ignored.
If you have a low income we will expect you to claim Income
Support or income based Employment and Support Allowance if
you are under 60 or Pension Credit if you are over 60 to help you
pay towards the cost of your care. The person arranging your
care will be able to explain these benefits to you and will help you
make a claim if you are entitled.

I own my own home – will this be taken

into account?
The value of your home will be taken into account when
calculating your residential or nursing care home charges if:
You have been a permanent resident in a residential or
nursing care home for more than 12 weeks and
You lived in your home by yourself before you moved into
the residential or nursing care home
If this applies to you and your home is worth more than £23,250
this usually means that you will have to pay the full cost of your
residential or nursing care home fees.
After how many weeks will the council take the value
of my home into account?
We will take the value of your home into account after 12 weeks.
If you do not have enough income or other assets to pay the full
cost of your care after the 12 week period, you may consider
selling your home in order to do so.
However, there are some people who do not want to sell their
homes and others who cannot sell them.
11
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
12
What if I can’t sell my home?
If you cannot sell your home, we may provide temporary funding
by paying the difference between your income and the full cost of
your care fees. We would leave you with enough income to cover
your personal expenses allowance of £22.30 per week.
If you enter into this arrangement with us you will have to repay
us when your home is sold. We will put a legal charge on your
property so that the amount we have paid in temporary funding
can eventually be recovered from the proceeds of the sale of
your home.
What if I don’t want to sell my home?
If you don’t want to sell your home, you may apply to us for a
deferred payment arrangement. Under the deferred payment
arrangement you can postpone paying the part of your care fees
that is based on the value of your home.
If you would like further information about a deferred payment
arrangement, or want to apply for a deferred payment
arrangement, you can do this by writing to:
Suffolk County Council
Finance Assessment Team (Deferred Payments)
Clapham House
Clapham Road
Lowestoft, Suffolk NR32 1QX
When you ask for a Deferred Payment Arrangement
you should:
Give reasons for not wanting to sell your home or
Explain the difficulties you expect to meet in trying to sell
your home.
Please note that we cannot agree to a deferred payment
arrangement unless you are the sole owner of your property.
You will also have to agree to having a legal charge placed on
your home and agree to, and pay for, the council obtaining a
valuation and placing a legal charge on it, so that we can
eventually recover the money paid out on your behalf.
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
What are the advantages of a deferred payment
arrangement?
Deferred payments allow you to live in a residential or nursing
care home and to use the value of your own home as security in
order to live in amore expensive residential or nursing home
without having to involve a third party.
In times of rising property values, the increase in house values
will help pay for your care fees. But please remember property
values can also fall.
If you need financial advice consult an Independent Financial
Advisor who has a CF8 qualification. They will be able to advise
on investments relating to care provision.
Under the deferred payment arrangement you will still have to
pay a contribution towards your care fees based on your income
and other savings or capital.
Means tested benefits such as Income Support, income based
Employment and Support Allowance or Pension Credit will be
affected by the value of your home, unless:
You are taking reasonable steps to sell it (the value of your
home is ignored for the purposes of claiming benefits for the
first 26 weeks, or longer if reasonable)
Or it is occupied by your partner or someone in your family
who is aged 60 or over, or who has a disability, or who is ill.
If the total amount of the deferred payment increases so that
it exceeds the value of your home, you may have to move to
a less expensive residential or nursing care home. We will
not meet higher costs in these circumstances.
Your personal allowance
When we work out how much you will pay towards your
residential or nursing care home fees, we will make sure that you
always have £22.30 per week left to pay for personal items such
as clothing and toiletries.

13
A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
Adult and Community Services standard
contract rates 2010/11
Private (independent) homes £
Residential care – standard rate £362

Residential care – enhanced rate £387

Residential care – special needs £502

Nursing care – standard rate £387

Nursing care – special needs £502

Suffolk County Council homes from £537

to £709

More information
We have produced a booklet called “Your Money in a Residential
or Nursing Home” which is available from any Adult and
Community Services Office or from Customer First (see page 16
for the address and telephone number).

What will I pay for equipment and meals?

Equipment for daily living
We do not usually supply simple low cost items below a total
value of £10 as we expect you to buy them yourself. However, if
you need more complex equipment we will loan it to you. There is
no charge for these loans.
Meals
If you cannot safely prepare meals for yourself, we will arrange
for meals to be supplied to you. These may be:
Meals on Wheels (which are delivered to you at home) or
14
 A Guide to Charges for Care for adults in Suffolk | 2010/11
Frozen meals ready to be reheated in your own home or
Meals provided at a Day Care Centre or
In exceptional circumstances, meals prepared in your own
home by a home carer.
The charge for a hot midday meal is £3.55 and for frozen meals £3.00.
If a home carer prepares meals for you in your own home you will
provide and/or pay for the ingredients. The charge for the home carer’s
time will be the same as for any other home care service (see page 4).

What if I have a query about my charges?

If you have a query about the money that you are being asked to
pay towards the cost of your care speak to Customer First .They
will arrange for you to be given a breakdown of how your charges
have been worked out or they will pass you on to one of the
specialist financial assessment teams.
If you are not satisfied with the explanation that you are given you
can ask for the decision to be looked at again. The person that
you speak to will explain how to do this.
If you are still not satisfied after this procedure has been
completed you may decide to make a complaint. You can do this
by writing to:
The Customer Care Manager
Customer Rights
Suffolk County Council
Floor 2, Endeavour House
8 Russell Road
Ipswich IP1 2BX

15
How to contact Adult and Community Services
If you live in Suffolk please contact:
CUSTOMER FIRST
0808 800 4005 (free of charge from landlines. Some mobiles may
charge) or write to:
CUSTOMER FIRST
PO Box 771
Needham Market, Ipswich IP6 8WB
Fax: 01449 677695
Email: customerservice@csduk.com
Personal appointments may be able to made where appropriate.
This information is for general guidance only and is not a full
statement of Suffolk County Council’s charging policies for Adult
and Community Services.
You should not make any financial decision solely on the basis of
information contained in this booklet. For further information, please
contact Suffolk County Council Adult and Community Services.

If you need help to understand this information in another

language please call 08456 066 067.
Portuguese

Polish

Bengali

Kurdish

Chinese
#
!"

 













 



 Farsi

If you would like this information in another format, including

audio tape or large print, please call 08456 066 067.
Suffolk Design & Print, Saxon House, 1 Whittle
Road, Hadleigh Road Industrial Estate, Ipswich
IP2 0JB. Tel: 01473 260600 Fax: 01473 253370