Planning your Support

The information here is a general guide. The services we can offer you are usually dependent upon assessment. Get in touch with the Adults and Children's Social Care Contact Service to talk to someone about your specific circumstances.

Services come in many different shapes and sizes. Some will suit you more than others - and there may be more on offer than you expect.

Social care services are not simply split between home care and residential care. There are lots of other options, like extra care housing or sheltered housing. These can help you to stay as independent as possible, with support available if and when you need it. You may be able to mix and match different types of support, including regular short breaks (respite care) for a relative or friend who supports you.

We will also do our best to make sure you get the kind of information, advice and preventive support that can help avoid the need for more intensive services.

How do I know what support is right for me?

When you telephone the Contact Service for Social Care, we start by asking you for some basic details about yourself and your support needs. This is what we call a contact assessment and helps us to understand the direction to take next. Your main need may be for information and advice. If so, we will provide this for you, or we will direct you to another organisation who can help you.

You may be able to manage most things, or you may need support to do some of the things that you used to take for granted. If you tell us how you are coping, we will be able to assess what support you need and what services are available to support you: 

• If you have just come out of hospital (or only need support for a short time) we will send you information about our Reablement Service and the Short Term Team. These services are specially-designed to help you get back up to speed as soon as possible, but offer different types of support. Someone from the right team will arrange to visit you at home, at a time convenient to you. Only then will we be able to assess with you whether they are the right option for you. 
• If you need a community alarm, assistive technology, or equipment and adaptations for your home, we will ask the relevant team to contact you directly to arrange to discuss this with you. 
• If your needs are long term, or more specialist, then we will ask staff from one of our locally based teams to come out and visit you for a more in-depth discussion of your needs. This is what we call a core assessment.

You can download the information in these pages as a booklet for printing.