We offer a variety of services to support you to stay living in your own home in the community as independently as you can, such as:
- personal care or help with the home;
- Day Care and Outreach or other daytime activities;
- services you can arrange yourself with Direct Payments;
- Supported Living
- Shared Lives services
- Extra Care services
For more information on this range of services, please see our getting help and support at home webpage.
How much will you have to pay?
The amount that you may have to contribute to the cost will depend on the service, your level of income and capital, and the personal budget you may get. Everyone's circumstances will be different, and not everyone has to pay a contribution. However, a few services are provided free; please see our paying for care and support webpage.
You are not charged separately for each service that you use. We carry out a financial assessment to work out what you can afford to contribute – it can be nothing, but if there is a contribution, it covers all the services your social care worker has agreed you require in your care and support plan.
The cost of these agreed services in a year becomes the personal budget allocated for your care. You can choose to take this budget and arrange your own services with a direct payment or ask us manage the personal budget and arrange and pay for your services.
How we calculate and contribution you may have to pay is set out in our Contributions Policy. The calculation depends on amount of your income above a level set by the government, although some types of benefits are not counted. We will also include the amount of capital (property, savings etc.), but we ignore the value of the property you are living in if it is your only or main home.
We may be able to make an allowance against any disability benefits you receive for “disability related expenditure” which are costs that you may have to pay because of illness or disability. This may reduce your financial contribution (if you have to pay one). For more information, please see our Disability Related Expenditure page.
If you would like to get an estimate of what you might have to contribute based on your income and capital, please try out our non-residential calculator.
You can get more details about how we work out what you have to contribute pay in our Paying for community-based care and support - ASC factsheet 1.
Who will tell you what you have to pay?
As part of the assessment of your care and support needs, staff from our Community Care Business Unit (CCBU) will work with you to complete the financial assessment form by phone or by visiting you. We will gather details about how much income and capital you have, and check that you are getting all the benefits you are entitled to.
When we have all of the information, we will then calculate how much you have to contribute (if anything) towards the cost of your care and support services and write to you to tell you how much you have to pay.
If you don't agree with us, or have a complaint
If you think a mistake has been made in calculating your contribution, or we have not accepted costs that you believe we should include, please contact us in the Community Care Business Unit (as below); we will review the calculation to make sure that no mistakes have been made. If you still don't agree you can go to an appeal.
If you have a complaint about our service quality or how our staff treated you, please contact the Customer Feedback Team;
- Online by creating a customer account at: www.my.sandwell.gov.uk
- Tel: 0121 569 7867
- Post: Customer Feedback Team, Sandwell Council, Roway Lane, Oldbury B69 3ES
Contacts and more information
Financial Assessments and Contributions;
Community Care Business Unit: email: CHT_CCBU@sandwell.gov.uk
Call: 07887 826455 or
07887 893539 or
07766 780242
General adult social care enquiries
Sandwell Enquiry email: sandwell_enquiry@sandwell.gov.uk
Call: 0121 569 2266.
More information
Get independent advice from:
- Citizen's Advice 0121 500 2703
- POhWER 0300 456 2370