1.3 Information and Advice

Audio & Quick Read Summary

1. Introduction

This policy sets out Lancashire County Council’s response to the Care Act 2014 in regard to its duty to deliver a comprehensive Information and Advice Service to all.  It aims to support you to make well informed choices about your care and support through the provision of information and advice.

The Care Act 2014, Section 4, recognises that Lancashire County Council has a crucial part to play in the provision of information and advice and must take an active role.

Information and advice is fundamental to enabling adults, carers and families to make well informed choices about care and support for their needs and to take control of how it is provided and funded. Information and advice promotes peoples’ wellbeing by increasing their ability to exercise choice and control. It is also a vital component of preventing or delaying people’s need for care and support.

2. Policy Aim

This policy aims to support you to make well informed choices about your care and support through the provision of information and advice.

3. The Legal Framework

Lancashire County Council has a legal duty to ‘establish and maintain a service for providing you with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers’ (Section 4, Care Act 2014).

Lancashire County Council must ensure that information and advice services cover more than just basic information about care and support and cover a wide range of care and support related areas. The service should also address prevention of care and support needs, finances, health, housing, employment, what to do in cases of abuse or neglect of an adult and any other areas required.

Lancashire County Council should consider how we communicate with you on a case-by-case basis, and signpost you towards information and / or advice that may be particularly relevant to you.

Lancashire County Council must also provide independent advocacy to assist your involvement in the care and support assessment, planning and review processes where you would otherwise have substantial difficulty in understanding, retaining or using information given to you, or in communicating your views, wishes or feelings and where there is nobody else who can offer this support (see Independent Care Act Advocacy policy).

4. Who are Information and Advice Services for?

Lancashire County Council is responsible for ensuring that all adults – including carers who have a need for information and advice about care and support, can access the service.

Lancashire County Council has a comprehensive information and advice service relating to care and support that is accessible and relevant to the needs of the local population, not just those who are in receipt of care and support funded by Lancashire County Council.

The main method of providing care and support information and advice, is through our Adult Social Care pages on our website or via the Adult Social Care telephone service to help support you, family members or friends on 0300 123 6720. Information and advice is available from a range of providers and sources not just that offered by Lancashire County Council.

Lancashire County Council’s information and advice service goes much further than the narrow definition of care and support offering information and advice on:

• available housing and housing related support options for those with care and support needs.

• effective treatment and support for health conditions, including Continuing Health Care arrangements.

• availability and quality of health services.
• availability of services that may help people remain independent for longer such as, home improvement agencies, handyman or maintenance services.
• availability of befriending services and other services to prevent social isolation.
• availability of intermediate care entitlements such as aids and adaptations.
• eligibility and applying for disability benefits and other types of benefits.
• availability of employment support for disabled adults.
• benefits and Welfare Rights advice.

• children’s social care services and transition.
• availability of carers’ services and benefits.

• sources of independent information, advice and advocacy.
• Court of Protection, power of attorney and becoming a Deputy.

• raising awareness of the need to plan for future care costs.

• practical help with planning to meet future or current care costs, including the Deferred Payment Scheme.
• accessible ways and support to help people understand the different types of abuse and its prevention.
• support in crisis situations.

4.1 Carers’ information and advice

If you are a carer, Lancashire County Council must recognise and respond to the specific requirements that you have for both general and personal information and advice. Your need for information and advice as a carer may be separate and distinct from information and advice for the person you care for. These distinct needs may be covered together, in a similar way to Lancashire County Council combining an assessment of the person you care for who needs care and support along with an assessment for you as a carer (see Carer’s Assessments policy), but may be more appropriately considered separately. This may include information and advice on:

• a short break from caring.
• the health and wellbeing of carers themselves.
• caring and advice on wider family relationships.
• carers’ financial and legal issues.
• caring and employment.
• caring and education and,
• a carer’s need for advocacy.

5. Levels of Information and Advice

Lancashire County Council delivers its information and advice service on three levels offering a tailored range of services, which assist you to navigate all points and aspects of your journey through care and support:

Tier 1 – Universal service

You may need information and advice before you need to access care and support services, to consider what actions you may take now to prevent or delay any need for care, or how you might plan to meet the cost of your future care needs.

Lancashire County Council promotes access to information that is universally available to everyone and aims to increase the opportunities for you to source information and advice independently where appropriate.

This universal service is considered to be the first point of access for you, offering timely and accessible information that can be sourced independently or with minimal support.

Information and advice at this point will, in the main, be available online or from local/community service providers. Online provision from Lancashire County Council is currently through the main website.

Tier 2 – Signposting service

We realise that there are many options available for you when you are thinking about getting help with Adult Social Care, and this can be very confusing. Through our Adult Social Care webpages we provide information and advice on how we can support you.

Where you need support to access relevant and often specific information and advice, Lancashire County Council’s Customer Access Service offers an Adult Social Care telephone signposting service. See Local contacts.

Where possible and appropriate, the Customer Access Service will signpost you to universal and/or specialist services, these include the Lancashire Wellbeing Service, Family Hubs and Youth Zones.

Tier 3 – Services for eligible people

If you have undergone a needs assessment and have been deemed to meet the national eligibility threshold established by the Care Act 2014, Lancashire County Council will still ensure that relevant, proportionate and timely information and advice will be made available as required to meet your identified care and support needs. Support with more complex issues will be offered particularly at the time of assessment, when developing a care and support plan for you or indeed a support plan for carers and also at the point of review.

Where you do not satisfy national eligibility criteria, Lancashire County Council must still provide information and advice on what can be done to meet or reduce your needs for example what support might be available in the community to help you or carer) and what can be done to prevent or delay the development of needs in the future.

This includes you if you are known or likely to be a full self-funder of your own care. Lancashire County Council should consider how this package of information can be tailored to your needs, with the aim of delaying deterioration and preventing future needs and reflect the availability of local support.

Information and advice will be delivered by specialist, professional workers representing Lancashire County Council.

If you meet the criteria, support from Independent Advocacy Services at these key points in the social care journey will also be made available (see Independent Care Act Advocacy policy)

6. Financial Information and Advice

Financial information and advice is fundamental to enabling you to make well informed choices about how you pay for your care and in considering how best to meet your care and support needs, immediately or in the future. Providing you with good and impartial financial information and advice will help you better understand how your available finances can be used more flexibly to fund a wider range of care options.

Lancashire County Council has worked in partnership with the Society of Later Life Advisers (SOLLA), to develop appropriate information, advice and signposting to ‘independent’ and ‘regulated’ financial advice. We recognise that you will want/need access to financial information and advice at key points in your journey to enable you to make sustainable plans to pay for your care. Lancashire County Council therefore offers a service that facilitates access to the full spectrum of financial information and advice – from basic budgeting tips to regulated advice.

In delivering this service, adult social care staff will be able to:

• support you to access the information and advice you need.
• actively describe the general benefits of independent information and advice.
• explain the reasons why it may be beneficial to take financial advice and
• explain the difference between generic free services, fee-based advice and regulated services.

Where you may be considering taking regulated financial advice, adult social care staff will not make a direct referral to one individual independent financial advisor but will direct you (or others) to the SOLLA website that will list all financial advisors registered with SOLLA –

Financial information and advice will also be available:

• on our Adult Social Care website which will include the link to the SOLLA
• at the point you make first contact with us.
• during times of your assessment, planning and review of your care and support needs and
• from Lancashire County Council Welfare Rights Service, which provides free and confidential advice to make sure that you are claiming all of the benefits you are entitled to.

Lancashire County Council must provide information to help you understand what you may have to pay, when and why, and how it relates to your individual circumstances. Lancashire County Council therefore offers information to enable you to understand:

• care charges.
• ways to pay.
• money management.
• how to make informed financial decisions.
• how to access independent financial information and advice and
• adult safeguarding – helping you to keep safe.

However, before providing financial information and advice directly, adult social care staff will establish whether you have a Deputy of the Court of Protection or have a Lasting Power of Attorney in respect of finance and property acting on your behalf.

7. Access to Information and Advice

Lancashire County Council will ensure that all information is accessible to everyone. Our website offers the option to translate all written information into a language of your choice or a larger font size and is compatible with commonly used screen-readers.

If you have a hearing impairment, the Customer Access Service provides the option of contacting them via Email or the Short Message Service (SMS) 0786 0031294 (Monday – Friday 9am to 5pm).

Lancashire County Council’s Information and Advice service is offered through a range of channels including:

• the council website and other appropriate internet websites.
• supported self-assessment of needs.
• face-to-face contact through local council offices.
• email [email protected]
• telephone 0300 123 6720 and
• independent services including advocacy and financial advice.

8. Local and National Sources of Information and Advice

Lancashire County Council will consider the appropriate interface and balance between local and national sources of information and advice. Where appropriate, we will signpost or refer you to national sources of information and advice where these are recognised as the most useful source.  Examples might include:

• NHS website;
• NHS Social Care Telephone Helplines and Forums;
• Moneyhelper;
• Care Quality Commission;
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman;
• consumer websites providing people with information and advice, including on managing their finances well, for example Financing later life care advice guides (Which?)
• national charities and/or advice services supporting people with disabilities or older people and those with expert knowledge of specific conditions (e.g. deafblind). For  example, Age UK, Independent Age, Alzheimer’s Society and Sense, and their national telephone advice/ helplines;
• national charities and advice services for carers, for example Carers UK or Age UK
• resources related to housing, accommodation and housing related support, for example First Stop Care Advice, and Foundations.

Referral or signposting to national sources however should only occur in the person’s best interests.

9. Complaints

If you are dissatisfied with a decision made by Lancashire County Council, you can make a complaint which will be initially handled by Lancashire County Council through the complaints process which is in line with the Local Authority Social Services and NHS Complaints Regulations 2009.

10. Further Reading

10.1 Relevant chapters

Financial Information and Advice

Wellbeing Principle

Preventing, Reducing or Delaying Needs

10.2. Relevant information

Chapter 3, Information and Advice, Care and Support Statutory Guidance (Department of Health and Social Care)

Adult Social Care Information and Advice Toolkit (Local Government Association)