How to apply for a community care assessment (CCA)

• Ensure that you are prepared. Think carefully about how you would like to spend your week. Think about everything you might like to do - around the house and garden, leisure, recreation/sports, work, further education (a wide variety of possibilities here) and other creative activities employment.
  
  
• Use a diary such as that provided on a previous page to help you to work out how you would like to spend your time each day of the week: morning afternoon and evening.
  
  
• Work our how much and what kind of help and support you would need to enable you to do these things.
  
  
• Find out what 'benefits' you might be entitled to: see 'benefits/money help'.
  
  
• Consider arranging for a family member or advocate to be with you during the Assessment. This person must be fully aware of your needs and have doscussed these with you.
  
  
• Consider whether you might like to receive a Direct Payment to enable you to employ a personal assistant to help you to do the various things that you have noted in the diary. This may seem daunting, but you can get help with recruiting someone, with making payments and with other employment issues: e.g. Glasgow Centre for Independent/Inclusive Living, or Glasgow Council for Voluntary Service.
  
  
• Submit an application in writing : see specimen letter. Keep a copy. If you cannot make an application or copy yourself, ask Citizens'Advice, or the Centre for Inclusive Living (CIL) to help.
  
  
• Follow up your request by telephone after 10 days - asking whether it has been received, how long it is likely to be before assessment takes place, and the name of contact in social work department. Record the information given.
  
  
• If you are unhappy with the response, telephone again after 10 days, seeking clarification of each point raised. Make a reminder telephone call or send letter at intervals of say 2-3 weeks until satisfactory response received. If response is still unsatisfactory, seek help from the CIL, a Citizen's Advice Bureau or from your local social work department (or head office).
  
  
• Once you have had the Assessment ask the social worker to go over the conclusions with you.
  
  
• Tell the social worker whether you would like:
  - all services to be provided directly by social work.
  - to seek a Direct Payment so that you can purchase services for yourself.
  - to have a mixture of direct service provision and direct payments.
  
  
• Ask for a written copy of the conclusions to be sent to you.
  
  
• Ask how long it is likely to be before you receive any service(s) and/or direct payment.
  
  
• If appropriate, ask the social worker about arranging a Carers'Assessment.
  
  

You may have to be patient and persistent before you receive your Assessment, and still more so before the services you require are made available. Also many social work departments are reluctant to offer a Direct Payment to enable you to choose your own personal assistant and activities; however you have a legal right to a direct payment as an alternative to the council itself providing services for you.

You are also likely to find that the Community Care Assessment focuses on the negative: on what you cannot do, rather than on what you can or - with help - could do. This is because social work has traditionally concentrated on providing care and support rather than on identifying users' aspirations and helping them to live an active and fulfilling life. It is up to users to try to change this culture.

Help, including advocacy, - s available for example from the Centre for Inclusive Living (CIL) and from some voluntary organisations that represent people with a specific disability (e.g. Scottish Huntington's Association, Epilepsy Connections, Child Brain Injury Trust, Revive Scotland). Electronic links to these organisations are provided on earlier pages of this website and on www.digg.org.uk