You might have to pay for some of the social care services you get. How much you pay will depend on your income, savings and living expenses.

Your Health and Social Care Trust (HSC Trust) should work out what services you need before doing a financial assessment. This is so that your ability to pay doesn't influence its decisions over what to provide.

If you have very complex ongoing healthcare needs, you might be eligible for NHS continuing healthcare funding. 
 

Direct payments

If your HSC Trust is going to fund some or all of your support, it will arrange services for you. If you want, you can ask the HSC Trust to give the funding to you, or your carer, as a direct payment instead. With direct payments, you will be able to choose what, how and when support is provided, and who provides it. This is called self-directed support. 

If you get direct payments, you must use the money to pay for the support your assessment said you need and that meet what it says in your care plan. Here are some examples of what you might use direct payments for:

• a personal assistant to support you at certain times or with certain tasks
• someone to support you on holiday
• a family member or a friend (usually, this mustn’t be someone who lives with you) to offer you support rather than a care worker from an agency.

Support for your carer

If you have a carer, they are entitled to an assessment of their needs. A person is a carer if they give you substantial and regular care and are not paid for it. After a carer's assessment, your HSC Trust might offer your carer some support. Your carer might have to pay for some of the services they get, depending on their financial circumstances. 

If you don’t agree with something

If you disagree with a decision not to pay for your care services, or you don’t think you’ve been offered enough support to meet your needs, or a service has been stopped, you can challenge the decision. 

Next steps

You can find out more about financial assessments and Direct Payments on the government's website
Citizens Advice in Northern Ireland can give you information if you want to complain about social care services
Carers NI  has information for carers
Disability Rights UK has information about employing personal assistants.