If a young person aged 18 or over requires social care support, this will be provided by adult social services.
Up to 18 years of age, your child’s needs are assessed under the Children Act 1989.
Over the age of 18, The Care Act 2014 applies to disabled young people and adults aged 18 or over and their carers.
The Care Act places a clear duty on the local authority to ‘promote the wellbeing of disabled adults and their carers’.
The Care Act also includes new rights for families with a child who may need support to prepare for the transition to adult services, and young carers.
The Act makes clear that services arranged before a child’s 18th birthday to meet their assessed needs can continue after their 18th birthday until adult services are in place.
If a child is likely to have needs when they turn 18, the local authority must carry out a needs assessment before then, to determine what these will be. The local authority will carry out the assessment if it considers it a ‘significant benefit’ to the child to do so.
These assessments will give you an idea of the help that you and your child can expect when they move into adult care and support.
After the assessment, the local authority should draw up a care and support plan; this may include a personal budget or direct payments to meet some of their needs.
For information on Adult Social Care support including direct payments, personal budgets and Individual Service Funds (ISF’s) please see the Bexley Local Offer: Direct payments, personal budget and Adult Social care support.
The Care Act provides much greater rights for carers of adults aged 18 and over. For the first time, the needs of a disabled adult’s carer will be treated in the same way as the needs of the disabled adult themselves. Carers can ask for an assessment if they ‘appear’ to have needs for support.
This is a low threshold and will entitle most carers to an assessment.
The assessment will take into account the carer’s well-being, any outcomes they’d like to achieve, whether they are willing and able to care for the disabled adult, and whether they would like to access work, education or training.
Please click here to understand a little more about Adult Social Care, Service Referrals and Assessments in Bexley
Preparing for Adulthood (PfA)
The term Preparing for Adulthood is used to describe the transition from childhood into adult life. You may hear people refer to this as PfA.
Usually, there are multi-professionals involved with this process to help support this transition.
These professionals are usually from Services such as:
- Education
- Health
- Social Care
To understand PfA a little better please click into our website page: Preparing for Adulthood
Or, access the Bexley Local Offer information pages on PfA: Preparing for Adulthood – General Information | Bexley Local Offer