Social Care Support - Guides
Social Care is personal care and practical support provided to children, young people and adults who need extra support. If you cannot find what you are looking for please contact Essex Carers Network at info@essexcarersnetwork.co.uk and we will try to help.
Essex Adult Social Care can be contacted through the following ways. You can also find information on the ECC website at Adult social care contacts | Essex County Council
Contact Adult Social Care
Telephone: 0345 603 7630
Textphone: 0345 758 5592
Monday to Thursday, 8:45am to 5pm
Friday, 8:45am to 4:30pm
Out of hours telephone: 0345 606 1212
Email: socialcaredirect@essex.gov.uk
Get support from the Children’s Social Care and Family Solutions for Young People
If you’re a parent or carer, child or young person and you need support, you can get in touch.
Phone: 0345 603 7627 and ask for the Children’s Line.
Our advisors will listen to your concerns and try to find the right level of support for you and your family.
You can also fill in our online Request for Support form.
You can find out how to make an effective request for support on our examples and guidance page.
Care Act 2014: overview guide – Luke Clements
Luke Clements a renowned solicitor with expertise around the rights of people who experience social exclusion, including disabled people and their carers has written this overview of the care act, which is kept relevant and up to date. He also has a website Luke Clements – Social and health care rights
CASCAIDr
CASCAIDr describe themselves as “an online specialist advice charity, expert in the legal principles that are supposed to govern how adult social services operate in England and Wales, and which intertwine with rights to NHS services. Our professional and charitable mission is supporting the sound administration of justice for anyone who, due to mental ill-health, physical or sensory impairments, deterioration or disability, needs access to care and support to enable them to work, study, stay safe or develop social networks.” They also provide a private online legal framework ADVOCACY service more information can be found on their website.
PFA factsheet – links between the children and families act and the care act
It can be confusing to families who are caring for a young person (18-25) with a learning disability in relation to the law as they are covered by both the children and families act and the care act this useful factsheet addresses the links between the 2 acts.
HFT family carer support service
Hft’s Family Carer Support Service (FCSS) is a free information and support service for family carers with an autistic relative or a relative with a learning disability aged 16 or older living in England. For more information about how they can support you look at their website.
Funding for individual employers for training for their PAs
As an individual employer you can apply for the individual employer funding to train yourself and your personal assistants (PAs) via skills for care.
This funding can be used to cover training costs to develop your skills as an employer, direct costs of completing training/qualifications, hiring replacement support whilst your usual PA is attending training courses and travel.
Applicable to people who employ their own care and support through a personal budget from social care or health (personal health budget) or using your own money (‘self-funder’).
Quality of support section in thinking ahead guide
The thinking ahead guide is a resource which supports families to think about and plan for the future and is free to download from their website. Section 8 – keeping an eye on things gives ideas of things to find out and question in relation to the quality of support your relative may be getting.
Employing personal assistants – a toolkit to help you employ your own PA – Skills for Care
Skills for care have developed an Employing personal assistants toolkit which will help you to think about your responsibilities as an employer, and includes guidance, templates and resources about recruiting, training and managing your team.
PFA - Problem solving toolkit - Luke Clements Cerebra document
A problem solving guide to commonly encountered problems: problems commonly experienced by disabled people and carers when trying to access their legal rights to social and health care support services. The guide is published by Cerebra and written by Luke Clements, illustrated by Gillian Clements and the Scottish law detail written by Donna M Morgan. This toolkit aims to support people who are encountering difficulties with the statutory agencies and to unpick these problems and to develop effective strategies for resolving them.
Personal budgets - Essex County Council
A personal budget is the amount of money Essex County Council will pay towards the care and support you need.
You have three different options on how you receive your personal budget. These are:
- a direct payment
- an individual service fund
- a council managed fund
ECC - Help guide to using a Community Micro-enterprise
What is a Community
Micro-enterprise?
A Community Micro-enterprise is
a small, local business, that offers
a service to support:
• Older people
• People with a disability
• People that want to improve
their mental health & wellbeing
A Community Micro-enterprise
gives you more choice about
your care as it offers something
different to traditional support
services.
Penderels Trust
Penderels Trust are the NEW Direct Payment support service in Essex. Their website has updates, information, video guides, and template forms. It also has the contact details should you need to email or speak to someone.
(Please note that users of a Personal Health Budget will still be using WeArePurple to manage their payments)
Over a Brew Virtual Coffee Sessions
ADASS the Directors of Adult Social Care Eastern Region has worked with Curators of Change to set up Over a Brew Virtual Coffee Sessions. A chance for people who use adult social care services and support, those who commission the services and providers to come together and talk about issues and topics relating to social care and support.
More about ‘Over a Brew’
We want time to get alongside each other over a brew, to share and test out ideas that will improve people’s experiences of requesting and accessing adult social care. Therefore, the region alongside Curators of Change (people who access care and support) have set up virtual “Over a Brew” coffee sessions to provide an open, honest space for people who draw on care and support, commissioners and providers to come together to talk about what’s working well and not so well. The key findings from each session, which is run every last Friday of each month (except August and December), will feed back into the “Putting People at the Heart of Care and Support” working group which will develop actions for the year ahead with a “we said”, “we did” approach.
NHS - Personal Health Budgets
A personal health budget is an amount of NHS money that is allocated to support your health and wellbeing needs. If you’re eligible for it, you (or someone who represents you), will work with your local NHS team to plan how you spend the money and get the care you need.
Carers UK - Disability Related Expenses
If you support someone with a disability or health condition, there could be extra expenses to help them manage, these could be classes as disability related expenses.
If people pay towards their care, then by claiming for disability related expenses to be included in the financial assessment these could reduce the cost to the individual.