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Community care

Applies to: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

If you have a disability, you may need help to continue living at home. For example, you may need someone to come in and help with personal things like washing and dressing. Or you might need help with cooking or shopping.

These services are provided by your local council:

• Social services in England and Wales
• The social work department in Scotland
• The Health and Social Services Trusts in Northern Ireland

If you have been in hospital, you should not be discharged until you have had an assessment of your continuing health care needs and, where necessary, of your community care needs.

The help you can get depends on your care needs.

You can choose to get money directly from your local authority to employ your own care worker – this is called direct payments.  Otherwise your local authority will pay the care worker directly.

Is it means-tested?

You might have to pay for community care services.  This depends on your income and savings.

Contact you local council for more information. You can find the contact details of your local council (link opens in a new window) on the Directgov website.

Further help

The Citizens Advice website (link opens in a new window) can give you more information about help for disabled people. 

Directgov, the government website, (link opens in a new window) has more information about help for disabled people.

Find an adviser tool.

This information has been produced by Citizens Advice. 

Updated: 6 April 2009