Devon's Eligibility Criteria for Adult Care Services

1. National and Legal Context - Fair Access to Care Services

National Context

In 2002 the Department of Health issued policy guidance on Fair Access to Care Services (FACS). This guidance provides a framework for determining eligibility for all adult social care services. Councils are required to provide or commission services to meet needs, subject to their resources, so that people with similar eligible needs receive services that deliver equivalent outcomes no matter where they live.

The eligibility framework is constructed by:

• Identifying four factors that are judged key to maintaining the individual’s independence: namely autonomy, physical and mental health and safety, the management of daily routines home environment and involvement in family and wider community life.
• The level of impact faced by an individual if the issues relating to independence are not addressed. That level of impact will be critical, substantial, moderate or low.

The approach requires councils to prioritise their support to individuals in a hierarchical way. Those whose needs have immediate and longer term critical consequences for their independence should be supported ahead of those with needs that have substantial consequences and so on.

Fair Access to Care Services requires that there should not be Eligibility Criteria for different services.

The FACS guidance confirms that resources can be taken into account in assessing a person’s needs for services and in deciding whether it is necessary to make arrangements for those services.

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Legal Context

Community care "is about assisting people with social care needs, and enabling them to remain living at home, as independently as possible for as long as is possible, in the belief that this is what most people want." (Ref. Michael Mandelstam: Community Care Practice and the Law - 2nd edition 1999.)

Community care assessment is the process by which information is gathered about a person to see if they have a need for community care services.

Community care assessment is a statutory duty on the local authority and a service in its own right that is separate from the later decision about the provision of services. It is provided under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 Section 47(1) (a) which states:

‘...where it appears to a local authority that any person for whom they may provide or arrange for the provision of community care services may be in need of any such services, the authority – shall carry out an assessment of his needs for those services..."

This means that an assessment is triggered when:

• The individual appears to be a person for whom the council may provide a community care assessment, for example they are disabled, elderly or unwell

and

• The individual's circumstances may need the provision of community care services.

Carers also have a right to an assessment under the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000 (ref. Carer Practice Guidance).

Community care services may be provided to individual adults with needs arising from physical, sensory, learning or cognitive disabilities and impairments or from mental health difficulties. In general, the council's responsibilities to provide such services are set out in the legislation specified in Appendix 2. (60KB - pdf help)

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