Charges for your social care support

Information about how much you need to pay for your care.

Charges for your care

Not all social care is funded by West Berkshire Council. Sometimes, an individual sources and funds their own care with no involvement from us.

The National Health Service may also fund care, depending on individual circumstances. When we do provide care, it is because someone meets the eligibility criteria for care services. Social care is means tested, therefore, you may be asked to contribute or pay in full for the services you receive. Under these circumstances, we will financially assess someone to see if they are required to pay, and how much.

Further information is available in our Guidance Notes listed below.

How much will I have to pay?

How much you have to pay towards the cost depends upon your personal financial circumstances. Some people pay the standard charge for the service they receive, whilst others pay a part of the cost, and some make no financial contribution at all.

To find out how much you might have to pay, try our online calculator. This is a rough guide only.

If you are assessed as having over £23,250 (currently referred to as the upper capital threshold), you will pay the full charge for your services.

Your actual contribution will be calculated after a financial assessment, completed by our Financial Assessment and Charging team. If you choose not to complete a financial assessment, we will charge you the full contribution.

Please note: you will need to be reassessed if your care needs or circumstances change.

Further information is available in our Guidance Notes listed below.

What is a financial assessment?

If you have had a care and support needs assessment, and you meet the eligibility criteria for receiving care, you will then have a financial assessment.

A financial assessment will help us work out how much you pay for the cost of your own care. Depending on things like savings, money you get every week, or properties that you own, you could be asked to pay for all of your care, part of it, or none of it.

Charging policies and guidance notes

The way in which we work out how much you need to pay, depends on the type of care you are receiving.

You can view our guidance notes below, along with our policies on assessment, to help explain how your financial assessment will be completed and your contribution calculated:

Care home placements and top up payments

If we identify that the most appropriate way of meeting your assessed needs is through a Care Home placement, we will calculate a rate (called an 'agreed personal budget') when developing your support plan. We can then use the agreed personal budget to provide accommodation to meet your needs.

Our 'Residential and Nursing Care Placements for Older People' Policy, sets out our policy for any new residential and nursing home placements, mostly for people aged 65 and over.

Top-up payments

If you want to choose an alternative placement that is more expensive than the one we have identified, someone must be willing and able to pay the difference between the care home fee and the amount in your personal budget, for the likely duration of your stay. This is called a 'top-up payment'.

You can find further information in our Icon for pdf Care Home Top Up Payments leaflet [576KB] .

Deferred payment scheme

If you are residing in a care home and own your property, you may be eligible to apply for the deferred payment scheme when your available capital reaches the upper capital threshold (currently £23,250).

Please read our Icon for pdf Deferred Payments Guidance Notes [539KB] for further information about the scheme.

Heath funding - NHS Continuing Healthcare

NHS Continuing Healthcare (NHS CHC) is a package of care for adults aged 18 or over which is arranged and funded solely by the NHS. In order to receive NHS CHC funding, individuals have to be assessed by integrated commissioning boards (ICBs) according to a legally- prescribed decision-making process to determine whether the individual has a 'primary health need'.

If a care package is fully funded by the health service under the NHS Continuing healthcare assessment and eligibility process, you will not have to contribute towards the cost of your care package.

If the care package is only partly funded this way, we will financially assess you based on our proportion of the funding.

NHS England have produced a web page with a video explaining what NHS CHC is, and how an individual is assessed.