Care Act Assessments and the Appeals Process

If you require an assessment the Adult Social Care Team will arrange to meet with you to complete your assessment. We aim to complete your assessment with you within 28 days. However, sometimes, it may take longer (up to 42 days) in order to meet with you and fully complete your assessment.

Your assessment considers your current circumstances and explores what you, your family, friends and community can do to meet your needs. Any care and support you receive should be aimed at helping you to achieve the things you have identified as being important to you.

If Adult Social Care are meeting your eligible needs, then, you will need to complete a financial assessment, this will determine if you need to pay for some, all or none of your care. Unpaid Carers are not charged for any support provided and do not have to complete a financial assessment for themselves.

The financial assessment will be based on whether you will be receiving support in your own home or in a residential or nursing home. The assessment will tell you how much we will contribute to your care as well as if and how much your own contribution will need to be.

This does not apply to unpaid carers.

If following your assessment, you have no eligible needs which require support from Adult Social Care, we will still discuss with you how any non-eligible needs can be met.

If you have eligible needs Adult Social Care can arrange for support to be provided to meet these needs. Alternatively, you can choose to take a direct payment and arrange your own care and support.

Reviewing your care and support

We will review your care and support once it is in place, to check that it is appropriate, safe and that your needs have not changed. Following this, we will undertake a review with you at least once every 12 months or sooner if your circumstances change.

You can make an appeal if you disagree with the outcome of your assessment. You must contact us within two weeks of getting your assessment results if you want to appeal. You’ll then need to tell us within a month what you do not agree with and the reasons why.

What happens next?

We will respond to you within two weeks of getting this form and expect to let you have a final decision within one month. If it will take us longer to reach a decision, we will keep you up to date with what is happening.

If you disagree with an assessment of your needs, we will review the information and make one of the following decisions:

1. The original assessment was right
2. We need to update the assessment based on your extra information
3. We need to see you again for a further assessment.

If you disagree with a decision about your support plan:

We will review the information and make one of the following decisions:

1. Accept the case you make and agree the plan
2. Ask a professional who’s not been directly involved in your case so far, to review the decision
3. Arrange to discuss this further with you (this happens if the issue is about risk, either to you or to others).

What if you remain unhappy with the service or disagree with the outcome of your appeal?

Make a complaint.

If you are not happy with our service, we would like to hear from you.

Call us on 020 7332 3498, email our Compliments and Complaints Team or write to us at:

Department of Community and Children's Services, City of London, PO Box 270, Guildhall, London, EC2P 2EJ.

If you need help with making a comment or complaint, you can contact City Advice on 020 7392 2919 or visit the City Advice page for more information.

If you aren't happy or satisfied with the response, then you can appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman.

They can be contacted by calling 0300 061 0614, visiting the Local Government Ombudsman website or write to:

Local Government Ombudsman, PO Box 4771, Coventry, CV4 0EH.