Pay for care at home

How it works

After your care needs assessment, we will ask you to complete a financial assessment to work out how much you can afford to pay towards your care home costs. The amount you will have to pay depends on the type of care and support you need and the amount of savings and investments that you have.

If you have savings and investments of less than £23,250, you could qualify for help to pay for the cost of your care.

Complete the assessment form

You can complete the assessment yourself by downloading the Financial assessment form (PDF). 

You will need Adobe PDF Reader to edit these documents, or you can print them off. 

You must return your completed financial assessment within 14 days or you will be charged for the full cost of your care home.

Get someone to help

If you need someone to help you with your financial assessment, you could ask:

• a friend or family member to represent you
• an advocate to help you understand 

You will need to sign the form if you are able to. 

What you’ll need to include (supporting documents)

You will need to include copies of documents to support your assessment. These may include:

• bank and building society account statements 
• savings accounts statements 
• statements for any ISAs or other investments
• documents for income such as private pensions 
• letter from Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) with details of: 
  • state pension 
  • any other benefits 
• documents showing the sale of any property in the last 7 years
• rent and mortgage repayments
• Council Tax bill
• power of attorney documentation (if you have registered someone to look after  your money)

You can also include receipts for: 

• gas and electricity bills for your home
• extra costs related to disability 
• invoices for privately arranged care 

Where to send it

You can send your completed assessment by email or post, along with copies of your supporting documents.

Send by email

You can send your completed assessment to asc.financialassessments@kingston.gov.uk.

For each document you send, we need the following information:

• file name 
• type of document (bank statement or electricity bill) 
• number of pages in the file

You can write this in the email.

Send in the post

You can post your completed financial assessment form to: 

How it’s worked out 

The financial assessment will look at your:

• income and state benefits
• savings and investments
• household outgoings such as utility bills
• extra costs due to a disability

The value of your home will not be included in the financial assessment. 

Savings and investments (Capital)

We look at your savings and investments, such as:

• bank or building society accounts
• property (other than your main home)
• land
• national savings certificates
• premium bonds
• stocks and shares

We do not count the value of the property that you live in, while you’re receiving care. 

Find out if you qualify

If you have capital of less than £14,250, we will not include this in our calculations. This means you’ll be left with at least this amount, if you have it. 

If your capital is between £14,250 and £23,250, you may still qualify for help to pay but we'll include this in our calculations.  

If you have capital of more than £23,250, you will need to pay the full cost for your care. When your capital falls below £23,250, you can ask to be reassessed.                         

How it's calculated

If you have capital above £14,250, we will assess every £250 over this amount. 

Every £250 (or part of £250) above £14,250 is looked at as an extra £1 per week of income. 

So, if you have capital of £4,000 above the lower capital limit of £14,250, we'll take into account £16 as income a week.

Full details of how we work out costs in a financial assessment are explained in our Charging Policy (PDF).

Income

What we count 

We will take into account any pensions and benefits you receive, such as:

• Income support
• Pension credits
• State retirement pension
• occupational or private pension
• Employment & Support Allowance (ESA)
• Severe Disablement Allowance
• Armed Forces Independence Payment
• Disability Living Allowance (DLA) care component
• Attendance Allowance 
• Personal Independence Payment (PIP) daily living component
• Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit
• Universal Credit

What we may ignore

The financial assessment might completely or partly ignore things like:

• charitable or voluntary payments 
• War Disability Pension
• War Widows Pension
• War Widows Supplementary Pension
• Working Tax Credit
• Disability Living Allowance (DLA) mobility component 
• Personal Independence Payment (PIP) mobility component
• Pension Credit (savings credit) 
• Guaranteed Income Payments under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme
• savings or earnings below a certain level as decided by the government 

Disability-related expenditure

If your income is made up of a disability-related income from the Department for Work and Pensions, you may be able to claim for extra expenditure that results from your disability or infirmity.

You can tell us about disability-related costs in your assessment, such as: 

• extra heating
• community alarm system
• extra laundry costs
• special clothing
• special dietary requirements
• disability-related equipment
• transport costs

You’ll need copies of invoices and receipts of these items.

To get more information, you can download our:

• Disability-related expenditure leaflet (PDF)
• Disability-related expenditure leaflet (easy read) (PDF)

Check your benefit entitlement

If you are entitled to benefits you’re not already claiming, we will help you to get them.

You can check your eligibility using the benefits calculator on GOV.UK.

Money to cover everyday costs 

When we calculate how much you will pay towards your care, we make sure that you’re left with enough money to cover everyday expenses. This is called the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG). It’s an amount set aside to cover your everyday expenses when we calculate what you can afford to pay towards your care each week. 

The government sets this amount every year. From April 2023 it is set at £214.35 a week.

Declaring your financial resources 

It is illegal to give away assets to avoid charges for social care. 

Any gift or disposal of assets in the last 7 years must be declared for your assessment. The recipient of gifted property or money will be liable for the charges. 

If you think you’ve forgotten to mention anything, we will need to review your assessment. This could mean that we need to make a backdated charge.