Let's talk finance
Our Finance Officers are available to talk to you about a range of issues and aim to offer help, support and advice. We can provide help with:
- understanding what the cost of Adult Social Care might be
- providing support, undertaking welfare benefit checks, and helping with repayment plans and ways to pay if you are struggling to pay your care charges and have built up a debt
- providing advice and sign posting you to organisations who can assist with your future financial planning
- understanding your Financial Assessment care charges
- understanding your care invoices
- undertaking a Financial Re-assessment following a change in your circumstances
Please complete our contact form so we can direct your query to the relevant team who will either email or call you back.
Alternatively, you can come along to one of our Let’s Talk sessions if you need to speak to a Finance Officer in person.
There are a number of Let’s Talk sites across the Borough, you find out where your closest Let’s Talk site is on our Let's Talk web pages.
There are currently five Let's Talk sites across the borough, which have been developed along with a range of partners and community organisations. Each site provides a warm welcome for residents who are facing challenging issues that are affecting their health and wellbeing.
At Let's Talk everyone is welcome to drop-in for face-to-face advice about wellbeing support that is available in the local area, as well as for practical advice and guidance. You can just drop into your closest site and speak to one of our Finance Officers.
People's health and wellbeing can be affected by lots of different issues including housing and financial challenges so visit a Let's Talk and start the conversation.
If you think that you cannot afford to pay for your invoiced care charges, or have built up a debt that is worrying you, you can speak to one of our Finance Officers at one of the Let’s Talk sessions or fill in our contact form for a call back or a visit.
They will talk with you about why you cannot pay your charge and discuss ways of helping you to meet your care charges, which could include setting up a repayment plan. They will also look at your welfare benefits to check you are receiving everything you are entitled to, and also identify if you need a review of your financial assessment.
More information about ways to pay and money/debt advice can be found on our difficulty paying invoices web page.
We have a lot of material to help you starting thinking about your future financial planning and how we can help with this, including estimating what your future care charges might be based on your income, savings, investments, stocks, shares and property equity.
We have helpful advice and contacts if you are starting to think about setting up Lasting Power of Attorney or requiring an appointee or deputy to help manage your affairs. More information can be found on our managing your money web page.
If you are eligible for Adult Social care, this is a chargeable service, but you may be entitled to some financial support which will be determined through a financial assessment means test. The means test will look at your income, savings, investments, stocks, shares and property equity.
You can use our Online Financial Assessment tool purely as a calculator to estimate what you might need to pay in the future. This will be based on the accuracy and completeness of the information you enter.
This is also useful if you have been self-funding, but your capital is close to close to falling below the upper capital threshold of £23,250 and you are thinking of approaching us for care and support.
More information around self-funding and what to do when your funds start running low can be found on our self funders web page.
Submit your financial assessment online
We have an Online Financial Assessment tool which you can use to submit your financial details to us. You can use this for free, in confidence and in your own time. This is the easiest and quickest way to provide us with this information.
Once submitted your information will be reviewed and verified and you will be contacted by a Financial Assessment Officer with your finalised figures – this will be the charge you are assessed to pay towards the cost of your care.
Accessing financial assessment letters and documents online
To access your financial assessment letters and documents online, you will need to sign up to our Client Finance Portal.
The Client Finance Portal allows you or your appointed representative to access financial documents relating to your Adult Social Care support services, including:
- financial assessment outcome letters, and the breakdown of how your care charge has been calculated
- direct payments breakdown every payment period
- deferred payment arrangements statements
The Client Finance Portal can also be used in conjunction with our Online Financial Assessment Calculator to submit information to us to in relation to your finances, to either complete your initial financial assessment or update the information we hold, should your financial circumstances change.