Community Care Assessment

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The idea of assessment is simply to get an accurate picture of what sort of help is needed. It is the first stage of planning what the health and social care services can do to provide this help.

The Care Management Team, Adult Learning Disability Team or Childrens Disability Team make these assessments.

There are three different levels of assessment depending on how complicated things are: Initial, Core and Comprehensive. The allocated worker will decide which level of assessment is most appropriate. During any community care assessment, the views of the person with learning disabilities are very important:

• If you would like a relative, friend or advocate with you to help explain things or to support you, they would be very welcome.
• The person being assessed will be involved in any decisions that are made.
• If other staff are involved, they may have to be told about the situation, but permission to share information should be sought before this happens.

It is possible to challenge the decision of an assessment and there are independent organisations that can give information about this – see Complaining About Services in the Choice And Control chapter.

Remember, even if the circumstances of a person’s case mean that they do not meet all the criteria (of the Care Management Team, the Adult Learning Disability Team or the Childrens Disability Team), they may still be assessed as eligible for services through other non-specialist social work teams.

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