Help with care home costs

You can ask the council to help with care home costs once you’ve spoken to a social worker and you’re either:

• moving into a care home (private or council)
• already living in a care home and your financial circumstances have changed.

To start the process, you’ll need to submit a form asking us to assess your finances, including income, savings, and property.

After the assessment, we’ll be able to tell you:

• how much we’ll contribute to your care home costs
• how much you’ll need to contribute to your care home costs.

Either of these people can submit the form:

• the person moving into care
• a representative of the person moving into care, such as a family member, friend, solicitor, or someone with power of attorney.

You can submit the form after:

• a social worker has arranged a long-term care placement and has mentioned the need for a financial assessment (if the person is in short-term or respite care, please speak to your social worker before filling in the form)
• you or the person you represent has been asked to complete a reassessment due to a change in financial circumstances (the council, the care home, or another relevant party might ask you to do this, or you can choose to do this yourself if you think we should reassess your finances).

If you (the person entering care) have capital (savings, property, or other assets) over £35,500, you are not eligible for this funding, and you’ll need to pay the full cost of your care. However, you can still submit the form, and we can:

• contribute towards personal care or nursing care, if you’re eligible for these (learn about free personal and nursing care on the Scottish Government website)
• finish the financial assessment later if your capital falls below £35,500.

If you were previously funding your own care and we’ve since approved you for council funding, we’ll normally apply backdated payments from either of these dates, whichever is later:

• the date you submitted the form asking us for a financial assessment
• the date your capital fell below £35,500.

You’ll need to provide this information when filling in the form:

• details of all income, including any pensions, benefits, or annuities
• details of all savings and investments, including bank balances, ISAs, shares, and bonds
• information about any property owned, including jointly owned properties, and who lives there.

If you were previously paying for your own care and your capital has fallen below £35,500, you’ll need this additional information when filling in the form:

• paperwork about any properties sold after entering long-term care
• evidence of any gifting, money or property transfers, or large purchases (this includes any weekly spending over £50).

Before you ask for an assessment, read this additional information if you own a home.

Ask for a financial assessment

We can help if you:

• have any questions about care home funding
• are not sure how to answer a question on the form
• do not have all the paperwork we’re asking for.

Contact us by either:

• phone 0300 300 0211
• email cpnursingresidential@renfrewshire.gov.uk.

If you’re not sure what to do, you can still submit the form without all the required information, and we’ll contact you to talk about anything that’s missing. You can submit the additional information later, either on your own or with our help.

We’ll review the information you provided and aim to contact within 7 to 10 days. We’ll let you know if we need more information from you to finish the assessment.

If we approve you for funding, we’ll send you a letter that says:

• how much we’ll contribute to your care home costs
• how much you’ll need to contribute to your care home costs.

If you’re funding your own care because your capital is over £35,500, the letter will confirm if you’re entitled to either:

• free personal care
• free personal and nursing care.

If your financial circumstances change, you should submit a new form to ask for a reassessment.

Additional information if you own a home

Your home’s value

In most cases, we’ll look at the value of your home in the financial assessment. However, we might exclude it from the assessment if one of these people are still living in the home:

• a spouse or partner
• a child under the age of 18 who is financially dependent on the person who is moving into care
• a close relative (usually a child or sibling) over the age of 60
• a close relative who is incapacitated (we’ll ask you for evidence to support this).

12-week property disregard

When assessing your finances, we may discuss a 12-week property disregard with you if:

• you own a home
• your capital is below £35,500 when you move into long-term care.

A 12-week property disregard means we would not include the value of your home in the financial assessment for the first 12 weeks after you move into long-term care. During these 12 weeks, the amounts you and the council contribute to your care home costs would be based on your other capital.

This is to give you time to consider important financial decisions, including whether to sell the property or seek financial advice.

Charging order

If you do not sell your property within the 12-week property disregard, we may be able to offer you additional temporary funding through a charging order secured against your property.

A charging order means we would continue to pay a contribution towards your care home costs until the property is sold.

There is a legal fee of £420 to set up a charging order, payable when the property is sold.

Once the property is sold, we would recover our additional temporary funding from the proceeds of the property sale. The amount we would recover includes funding we provided only after the end of the 12-week property disregard, not funding we provided during the property disregard.  

The solicitor handling the sale will liaise with our legal team to arrange for the charging order to end once we receive our payment. We’ll only get back any contribution we paid towards your care home costs, not any personal or nursing care funding you received during this time.