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Advice & funding

Clear answers when care feels complicated

Care brings practical questions: where to start, what the different services mean, how assessments work and who may help with the cost. These guides explain the basics in plain English and point you towards independent information you can check for yourself.

A Muzaana carer carrying a box of care records beside the branded company car outside a block of flats.

Where the money comes from

Home care is paid for in three ways

Most people meet one of these, some meet two at once, and which one applies is decided by a council, an Integrated Care Board or your own circumstances — never by a care agency.

  • Your council may pay towards it

    Decided byThe London Borough of Hounslow, or your own council

    After a free care needs assessment, the council decides whether your needs are eligible. A separate financial assessment then works out what, if anything, you contribute. Charging for care at home is something a council may do, not something it must do.

  • The NHS may pay for all of it

    Decided byNHS West and North London Integrated Care Board

    Where someone’s needs are mainly health needs rather than social care needs, NHS Continuing Healthcare pays for the whole package. It is not means-tested, and — this is widely misunderstood — it can be provided in your own home, not only in a care home.

  • You may pay for it yourself

    Decided byYou, once you know what the other two would give you

    Many families arrange and pay for care privately. It is still worth asking the council for an assessment first: the right to one does not depend on your savings, and it may find help you did not know you could ask for.

Where to start

Arranging care at home

Almost everything starts with one free assessment by your council — and the most common reason families never ask for it is a belief that they would not qualify.

Ask for a care needs assessment, whatever your savings

Your council must assess anyone who appears to need care and support. The law says that duty applies regardless of how much money you have and regardless of how severe the council thinks the needs are, so having savings is not a reason to be turned away and not a reason not to ask.

The assessment itself is free. A council has no power to charge for assessing you or for writing your care plan — only for the care that follows.

  • In Feltham, this is the London Borough of Hounslow’s Adult Social Care First Contact Team.
  • Anyone can ask on someone’s behalf with their permission — a relative, a friend, a GP, a district nurse or a hospital team.
  • If you look after someone, you have a separate right to a carer’s assessment of your own needs, on an easier test than the one applied to the person you care for.

Care Act 2014Care and support statutory guidance

What the assessment looks at

It covers the effect your needs have on your wellbeing, the outcomes you want in day-to-day life, and whether care and support would help you achieve them. The council must involve you, any carer you have, and anyone else you ask it to involve.

It must consider all of your needs, including the ones a relative is already meeting. Care a family member provides does not count against you, and it should not quietly reduce what the council offers.

  • Managing a task but with significant pain, distress or anxiety counts as being unable to do it.
  • So does managing it unsafely, or taking significantly longer over it than you would expect.
  • Needs that come and go should be assessed on your bad days as well as your good ones.

Care Act 2014Care and support statutory guidance

How long it takes, and what happens if you cannot wait

There is no legal deadline for a needs assessment in England, despite what a good many websites say. The guidance requires it to be done over a reasonable timescale and expects the council to tell you what that is and keep you informed. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman generally treats four to six weeks from the request as reasonable.

Where needs are urgent, a council has the power to put care in straight away — before any assessment, before the financial assessment and regardless of which area you normally live in. It is a power rather than a duty, but the guidance says councils should respond immediately and settle the paperwork afterwards.

Care Act 2014Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

How the cost is worked out

Paying for home care

The rules for care in your own home are not the rules for a care home, and the differences are all in your favour. This is the part of the system most often explained using the wrong set of them.

The financial assessment comes second, and separately

Once the council has decided your needs are eligible, a financial assessment works out what you contribute. It must never influence the assessment of what you need — the two are deliberately kept apart.

Only your own money is looked at. A council has no power to means-test a couple jointly, so each person is treated individually, and money that arrives as joint income is normally split equally.

You must be given the result in writing, showing how it was worked out and what you will be charged. It should be reviewed at least once a year, or whenever your circumstances change.

  • Earnings from work or self-employment are ignored completely, in every setting.
  • If you refuse the financial assessment, the council is entitled to treat you as being above the limit and charge you the full cost.

Care and Support (Charging) Regulations 2014Care and support statutory guidance

Your home is not counted

For care in your own home, the value of the property you live in must be disregarded entirely. There is no time limit on this and no equivalent of the charge a council can place on a house when someone moves permanently into a care home.

The elaborate property rules people have heard about — the twelve-week disregard, deferred payment agreements, the qualifying-relative tests — belong to care homes. They do not apply to you if care is being provided where you live.

Care and Support (Charging) Regulations 2014Care and support statutory guidance

If your savings are above the upper limit

Expect to meet the full cost. Above £23,250 the statutory guidance is that you are not entitled to financial assistance, so plan on paying rather than on an exception.

What you do keep is a right worth using: where your needs are eligible, you can require the council to arrange the care for you rather than doing it yourself. It may charge an arrangement fee, and Hounslow does. That is a duty on the council, not a favour.

Two narrower points are worth knowing, without relying on either. The outright ban on a council contributing above the upper limit applies to permanent care home places; for care at home the regulations leave the council a discretion it need not use. And the £23,250 and £14,250 figures are minimums for care at home — a council may set higher limits if it chooses, though never lower ones.

Care and Support (Charging) Regulations 2014Care and support statutory guidance

What you are left to live on

A charge must never reduce your income below the minimum income guarantee. It is calculated after your housing costs and after disability-related expenditure, not from your gross income — which means the order the sums are done in matters, and it is worth asking to see them.

It is a floor rather than a target. A council may leave you with more, and the government has said it is wrong to assume that everything above the guarantee is simply available to be taken in charges.

Disability-related expenditure is the extra you spend because of a disability, where the council is counting a disability benefit as your income. It should cover things like extra heating, laundry, special diets, community alarms and care you buy privately that the council is not meeting. Councils should not apply blanket limits or refuse categories without a reason.

  • Charging for care at home is a power, not a duty. A council may choose not to charge at all.
  • Councils must not charge more than the care actually costs them to provide.
  • Where a council provides meals, shopping or transport, the minimum income guarantee is reduced by what those cost it — a deduction that is easy to miss on a bill.

Care and Support (Charging) Regulations 2014Care and support statutory guidance

Direct payments: council money, your choice of agency

If the council agrees to meet your needs, you can ask for the money instead of the services. A direct payment is your personal budget paid to you, so you arrange the care yourself. It is not a benefit, and it is paid to be spent on meeting your assessed needs rather than as income.

Two things about direct payments are widely misunderstood, and both matter here. You do not have to become somebody’s employer — a direct payment can be used to buy care from a registered agency, which employs the carers itself. And the council cannot tell you which agency to use; the regulations expressly forbid a condition requiring your needs to be met by a particular provider.

Nor do you have to handle the money entirely alone. Someone can be nominated to manage it for you, or the council can arrange a managed account, and you can still qualify if you would be able to manage with help you can get.

  • Councils normally will not let a direct payment pay a relative living in the same household, though they can agree to it where it is necessary.
  • You will need to keep records of what the money was spent on.
  • A direct payment is the usual route by which a family uses council funding to choose Muzaana, since we are not one of Hounslow’s own commissioned providers.

Care Act 2014Care and Support (Direct Payments) Regulations 2014

There is no cap on care costs

A lifetime cap of £86,000 and a more generous means test were legislated for and were due to begin in October 2025. They were dropped in July 2024 and have not been revived: the section of the Care Act that would create the cap has never been brought into force.

An independent commission on adult social care is running and is due to report in summer 2027, and a public consultation on how the country should pay for care runs until April 2027. Nothing has changed yet, so plan on the rules as they are rather than on the ones in the headlines.

Care Act 2014 section 15, still marked prospectiveAge UK: are there new rules about paying for social care?

If you arrange and pay for care yourself

Most private arrangements are priced by the visit, and what drives the cost is how long each visit is, how many there are, what time of day they happen, whether weekends or bank holidays are involved, and whether one carer or two are needed. Overnight support is priced differently again depending on whether the carer sleeps or stays awake.

Before care starts you should be given the charges in writing, along with the notice period, what happens if a visit is missed and how charges change if your needs do. Muzaana will always set out proposed charges before you are asked to decide anything.

  • A council can offer information and advice to people who fund their own care, and must do so — you do not lose that by paying privately.
  • Take regulated financial advice before releasing equity or buying a care annuity. Look for an adviser accredited by the Society of Later Life Advisers.

Care and support statutory guidance

The figures, for 2026/27

Upper capital limit
£23,250
Above this, expect to meet the full cost — but you can still require the council to arrange the care for you. For care at home a council may also set a higher limit of its own. DHSC charging circular, 2026 to 2027
Lower capital limit
£14,250
Below this, your savings are left out of the calculation altogether and only your income is considered. DHSC charging circular, 2026 to 2027
Tariff income
£1 a week per £250
Savings between the two limits are treated as producing this assumed income, for every £250 or part of £250. It is a calculation, not money you actually receive. Care and Support (Charging) Regulations 2014
Minimum income guarantee, single person over State Pension age
£241.45 a week
What a council must leave you to live on after charges, counted after housing costs and after disability-related expenditure. Different amounts apply to couples and to people under State Pension age. DHSC charging circular, 2026 to 2027
Minimum income guarantee, single person aged 25 to State Pension age
£120.40 a week
This rose by 7% in April 2026, well above the 3.8% applied to the pension-age rate. Premiums for disability and for caring are added on top. DHSC charging circular, 2026 to 2027

Money you may already be owed

Help you may be entitled to

Two of these are not means-tested at all, and both are widely under-claimed. They are worth checking before you work out what care will cost you.

Attendance Allowance and Personal Independence Payment

Attendance Allowance is for people over State Pension age who need help with personal care or supervision to stay safe. It is not means-tested, it is not taxable, and what you have in savings makes no difference. You do not need to be receiving care already, and you do not have to spend it on care.

It is the NEED for help that matters, not whether you are getting any. Someone managing alone, or being helped by family, can still qualify — and no particular diagnosis is required. You normally need to have needed the help for six months, with faster rules for someone nearing the end of life.

Personal Independence Payment does the same job for adults under State Pension age and has an extra component for mobility. Its qualifying period is shorter: three months, and expected to continue for at least nine more.

Claiming either can also unlock more Pension Credit, Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction, so it is worth a full benefits check rather than a single claim.

GOV.UK: Attendance AllowanceGOV.UK: Personal Independence Payment

If you look after someone

Carer’s Allowance is for people providing at least 35 hours of care a week to someone who receives a qualifying disability benefit. It is taxable, and it is not means-tested — but there is an earnings limit, and it is a cliff edge rather than a taper. Earn a penny over it in a week and the whole week’s payment is lost.

Claim it with care, and check first. Carer’s Allowance can reduce the benefits of the person you care for: where they receive a severe disability addition, that stops as soon as someone is actually paid Carer’s Allowance. The two amounts are almost identical, so a household can go through the whole process and end up no better off, or worse. An independent benefits check before claiming is the sensible order.

Carer’s Credit protects your National Insurance record where you care for at least 20 hours a week but cannot claim Carer’s Allowance.

GOV.UK: Carer’s AllowanceGOV.UK: Carer’s Credit

Council tax, and adapting the home

Someone medically certified as severely mentally impaired — which includes many people living with dementia — may be disregarded for council tax entirely, and a household of one such person and one other adult may qualify for a discount. The Disabled Band Reduction Scheme can move a home into a lower band where a room or extra space is needed for a disabled person.

A Disabled Facilities Grant from the council can pay towards adaptations such as a level-access shower, a stairlift or a ramp. It is means-tested for adults, and the council will assess what is needed before it is agreed.

  • Councils do not always advertise the severe mental impairment disregard, and some still publish an out-of-date list of the benefits that qualify. It can often be backdated, so it is worth asking directly.
  • Community equipment and aids must be provided free by the council, with no cost limit and no financial assessment. The separate £1,000 threshold is what defines a “minor” adaptation, and adaptations at or below it are free too.

GOV.UK: Disabled Facilities GrantsGOV.UK: council tax discountsCare and support statutory guidance

Weekly rates, for 2026/27

Attendance Allowance, lower rate
£76.70 a week
For help needed during the day or during the night, for people over State Pension age. GOV.UK: Attendance Allowance
Attendance Allowance, higher rate
£114.60 a week
For help needed both day and night, or for someone nearing the end of life. GOV.UK: Attendance Allowance
Personal Independence Payment, daily living component
£76.70 or £114.60 a week
Standard or enhanced rate, for adults under State Pension age. A mobility component of £30.30 or £80.00 a week may be paid as well. GOV.UK: PIP payment rates
Carer’s Allowance
£86.45 a week
For someone providing at least 35 hours of care a week, where the person they care for gets a qualifying disability benefit. Taxable, and lost entirely in any week you earn more than £204. GOV.UK: Carer’s Allowance

After a hospital stay

Coming home from hospital

Some of the best help available is free, time-limited and easy to miss in the rush of a discharge. Knowing what it is called makes it much easier to ask for.

The first six weeks can be free

Intermediate care and reablement are short-term support to help you recover and get back to doing things for yourself after a stay in hospital, a fall or an illness. Where a council or the NHS provides them, they must be free for up to six weeks — for everyone, whatever your savings, and whether or not you have longer-term eligible needs.

Be careful of the shorthand, though. This is not an automatic right to six weeks of free care after any hospital stay, and you will see it described that way. You have to be assessed as someone reablement would actually help, and it is that specific service which is free — not whatever home care you happen to arrange when you get back.

Reablement is also deliberately different from ordinary home care. A carer may do things for you at first, but the aim is to practise until you can do them yourself, so the amount of help should reduce rather than settle.

  • Aids and equipment are free, and so are minor adaptations costing £1,000 or less.
  • A council may choose to give reablement free for longer than six weeks where there is a clear benefit in doing so.

NHS: care you can get for freeCare and support statutory guidance

What happens when the free period ends

Before it ends there should be a fresh look at what you still need. If ongoing care is required, the council assesses your needs and then your finances in the ordinary way, and this is the point at which many families first arrange private care — either to continue the same support, to fill gaps around what the council provides, or because they would rather choose the agency themselves.

You can ask for a care needs assessment before you leave hospital as well as after. You should not be discharged without a plan for the support you need at home.

Care and support statutory guidance

If someone is seriously unwell

Where a condition is deteriorating rapidly and may be entering a terminal phase, NHS Continuing Healthcare has a fast-track route that skips the usual screening and full assessment. A package of care should normally be commissioned within 48 hours of the Integrated Care Board receiving the completed form.

A clinician involved in the person’s care completes it. Families cannot submit one themselves, but they can and should ask the hospital, GP or specialist nurse whether fast track is appropriate.

National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare

Judging an agency

Choosing a home-care provider

These are the questions worth asking any agency, including this one. If an answer is vague, ask for it in writing.

Check the registration before anything else

Any agency providing personal care — help with washing, dressing, using the toilet, eating — must by law be registered with the Care Quality Commission and must have a registered manager. You can look any provider up on the CQC website and read its most recent report.

One thing to watch for: an introductory agency that only introduces you to self-employed carers, and does not employ or direct them, may not need to be registered at all. That can be a perfectly legitimate arrangement, but it means nobody is regulating the care itself, and you may become the carer’s employer without realising it. Ask directly which kind of organisation you are dealing with.

  • Muzaana Care Services is registered with the Care Quality Commission and rated Good.
  • CQC does not investigate individual complaints. It uses what it is told as evidence about a service, so telling them is still worthwhile.

Care Quality CommissionCQC: search for a provider

What to ask before you agree to anything

The answers to these tell you more than a brochure will. A good agency will not mind being asked, and will put the answers in writing.

  • Will the same carers come, and how will I know who to expect?
  • What happens if a carer is delayed or a visit is missed, and how would I find out?
  • Who do I call outside office hours, and does a real person answer?
  • How is my care plan written, how often is it reviewed, and can I change it?
  • What training have the carers had, and are they all checked through the Disclosure and Barring Service?
  • How is medication handled and recorded?
  • What are the charges, what notice do I have to give, and what happens to the price if my needs change?
  • How do I complain, and what happens after I do?

If something goes wrong

Raise it with the agency first — it must have a complaints procedure and must tell you how to use it. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman looks at complaints about adult social care, whether the council arranged it or you paid for it privately.

Where care is funded by the NHS, including NHS Continuing Healthcare, complaints go to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman instead. If you are worried that someone is at risk of abuse or neglect, contact the council’s adult safeguarding team, or the police if there is immediate danger.

Local Government and Social Care OmbudsmanParliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Understanding care terms

The words you will meet, in plain English

Care has a vocabulary of its own, and some of these words mean something narrower in law than they do in conversation. Where that is true, it is said.

Home care, or domiciliary care
Care provided to you in your own home rather than in a care home. It covers everything from a half-hour visit to a carer living in.
Personal care
Hands-on help with washing, dressing, using the toilet, eating and similar. It is the specific activity that makes an agency legally required to register with the Care Quality Commission, which is why the phrase appears so often.
Waking night and sleep-in
Two different kinds of overnight support. On a waking night the carer stays awake throughout; on a sleep-in they are expected to sleep but are there if needed. Neither is a regulated category with a fixed legal meaning — they are what the industry calls them — so they are staffed and priced differently by different agencies and it is worth asking exactly what is included.
Reablement and intermediate care
Short-term support after a hospital stay, fall or illness, aimed at getting you back to doing things yourself. It must be free for up to six weeks.
Respite care
Care arranged for a limited period, often so that a family carer can take a break, attend to something else or recover themselves.
Care needs assessment
The council’s assessment of what support you need. It is free, and your right to one does not depend on your savings.
Carer’s assessment
A separate assessment of the needs of the person doing the caring, not the person being cared for. The test for getting support from it is easier than the one applied to the cared-for person.
Financial assessment, or means test
The council’s calculation of what you contribute towards care it arranges. It happens after the needs assessment and must not influence it.
Capital limits
The savings thresholds used in the financial assessment. For care at home they are minimums a council may raise, not fixed ceilings, and being above the upper limit does not stop a council helping if it chooses to.
Tariff income
An assumed income the council adds to your real income for savings between the two capital limits. It is a figure in a calculation, not money you receive.
Minimum income guarantee
The weekly amount a council must leave you with after charging for care at home. The care-home equivalent is called the personal expenses allowance and is a much smaller figure — the two are frequently confused.
Disability related expenditure
Extra costs you face because of a disability, which the council must allow for before charging you where it counts a disability benefit as your income.
Personal budget
The amount the council works out that your eligible needs will cost to meet, including both its contribution and yours.
Direct payment
Your personal budget paid to you as money, so you can arrange your own care instead of taking the services the council arranges. It is not a benefit, and it can normally be used to buy care from a registered agency.
NHS Continuing Healthcare
A full package of care funded by the NHS for someone whose needs are mainly health needs. It is free, it is not means-tested, and it can be provided in your own home as well as in a care home.
NHS-funded nursing care
A weekly payment the NHS makes directly to a care home with nursing. It is not available for care in your own home, and it is a different thing from NHS Continuing Healthcare.
Integrated Care Board
The NHS body that plans and pays for health services in an area, and the body that decides NHS Continuing Healthcare. Integrated Care Boards replaced Clinical Commissioning Groups in July 2022. Hounslow is covered by NHS West and North London Integrated Care Board.
Care plan
The written record of what support you will receive, when, how you want it given and what you would rather keep doing yourself. Be aware that the phrase covers two different documents: the council writes a care and support plan setting out your eligible needs and your budget, and your agency writes its own working plan for the visits themselves.
Registered manager
The named person the Care Quality Commission holds responsible for how a service is run. Every registered home care agency must have one.
DBS check
A criminal record check through the Disclosure and Barring Service. Care workers require an enhanced check.
Mental capacity and best interests
Capacity is judged for one decision at one time, and is assumed unless shown otherwise. Where someone cannot make a particular decision, it must be made in their best interests, taking account of their past and present wishes.
Lasting power of attorney
A legal document appointing someone to make decisions for you if you cannot. There are two separate types and having one does not give you the other. They also start at different points: a health and welfare attorney can only act once you have lost capacity to make the decision, while a property and financial affairs attorney can act as soon as the document is registered, if you allow it.
Advocacy
Independent help to say what you want and understand your options. Where someone would have substantial difficulty taking part in an assessment and has no suitable friend or relative to support them, the council must arrange an independent advocate.

Where to get advice

Independent help, and what we can do ourselves

What we can help with

  • Explaining how the different routes work, and which questions to ask whom.
  • Pointing you to your council, your Integrated Care Board or an independent adviser, and telling you what to ask for by name.
  • Setting out proposed charges in writing before you decide anything.
  • Working alongside a direct payment or a package the council or NHS has already agreed.
  • Talking things through before you have decided anything at all.

What is decided elsewhere

  • Whether your needs are eligible for council support — your council decides that.
  • What you will be charged by the council — its financial assessment decides that.
  • Whether NHS Continuing Healthcare applies — the Integrated Care Board decides that.
  • Whether you qualify for a benefit — the Department for Work and Pensions decides that.
  • We cannot arrange, approve, secure or speed up any of those decisions, and you should be careful of anyone who says they can.

Independent information and advice

  • Age UK — care and funding advice

    The clearest free guides to paying for care in England, including detailed factsheets updated every year.

  • MoneyHelper — care costs

    Free, government-backed guidance on funding care, including how to check what a care package will cost you.

  • Citizens Advice

    Free independent advice on benefits, charges, debt and challenging a decision.

  • Carers UK

    Advice and a benefits calculator for people looking after someone, including the traps in claiming Carer’s Allowance.

  • Turn2us benefits calculator

    A free check of every benefit and grant you may be entitled to, in one place.

  • Care Quality Commission

    Look up any care provider’s registration, rating and most recent inspection report.

Near Feltham and the boroughs we cover

Talk to our care team

Still not sure where to start?

You do not need to have worked out how care will be paid for before you contact us. Tell us what is happening and we will explain the options, say plainly what we can and cannot help with, and point you to the right people for the rest.

You can contact us for yourself, a family member or someone you support professionally.

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