Please let us know what items or living expenses you need. We will require proof of your identity and your circumstances in order to process your application. It is also important that you provide your contact details, particularly a telephone contact number, as we will use this to get in touch with you about your application. For this we will check the information held on our records and we may contact other organisations in connection with your circumstances.
We will contact you directly if we need any more information. If you are receiving help from a Support Worker in the Social Services, National Health Service or a Money Advice or Welfare Rights Officeryou could ask them to make the claim for assistance with you or at least list their contact details so we can obtain more information to back up your need for help.
We will contact you by phone and will also send you a letter to confirm our decision. For a community care grant application, you will be notified of our decision within 15 working days of us receiving all the supporting information we need to assess your application. It is important therefore that you provide as much information as you can when completing your application. You should also provide evidence about your situation with regard to any medical conditions, changes in your housing situation.
This could be a letter of support from a Council department or an agency that helps you, or your tenancy agreement, or a letter from an NHS professional if you or a member of your family needs extra help due to medical reasons.
If you are awarded a community care grant you will either be paid the amount of the award via BACS directly into your bank account, or you will be issued with an Allpay card pre-loaded with the value of the award made. Allpay cards can be used at any outlet that takes Mastercard payments. Occasionally we may agree with you that a payment can be made to your Support Worker to allow you to purchase goods under their guidance. This is called a Supervised Spend.
If you are unsuccessful and cannot get a community care grant, you can get more advice about benefits you might be able to claim.
If you do not agree with the decision we have made you can ask for us to carry out a review. To do this, please write or email us within 20 working days of being notified of the decision, stating why you disagree. To be awarded a grant, an applicant needs to be eligible for a grant, but the person they are caring for need not. The applicant does not need to be statutorily regarded as homeless.
There are two conditions for receipt of the grant:. Exceptional pressure is a greater pressure than you would be under just from living on a low income which is impacting negatively on their ability to live in a settled home.
All families and individuals, especially those on low income, face pressure at various times, so that in itself is not a reason to award a Community Care Grant. A Community Care Grant, however, may be awarded to ease exceptional pressures on a family. What could be considered as exceptional pressure to one person may be different to another depending on their personal level of resilience.
Decision makers should consider the degree of this pressure in terms of its effect on the individual family as well as the type of pressure, or how common it is. The qualifying individual in this circumstance must have been in prison, or a care institution, for a a period of at least three months any part of which falls within the nine months preceding the date of application or b two or more separate periods within that nine month period [46].
This can be for up to seven nights, excluding travelling time, and may be repeated in the period prior to release to help prepare the individual for their return to the community.
The applicant needs to meet the eligibility criteria, but the person on temporary release does not, so there is no need to establish the person on temporary release's financial circumstances. The grant is awarded to pay for living expenses while the person is on temporary release, for example, food or additional fuel consumption. Awards for living expenses should be paid at single person non-householder rate. There must be some risk that this may not be possible without a grant.
That risk does not need to be immediate for an applicant to qualify, and decision makers should use their discretion in deciding what constitutes a 'risk' or 'exceptional pressure'.
As set out in the Regulations, a person should be on a low income to be considered eligible for assistance. It is not a requirement to be in receipt of an income related benefit to be eligible for assistance from the fund. There are a number of ways to decide whether an individual is on a low income, these are outlined below. It should be noted that not everyone who is entitled to apply for income based benefits does so.
These include:. You'll need to check how your local council accepts applications. It might accept applications by post, online, by phone or in a face-to-face interview. It might accept applications by all of these methods or only one of them. Find out how to apply for a community care grant in your local council on mygov. If you can apply to your local council by post or online, you'll need to complete your local council's application form. You might be able to get a copy of the application form by downloading it from your local council's website or by asking for a copy over the phone.
It's important to include all relevant information on the application form and explain what could happen if you don't get a grant. A social worker or someone else who works with you might be able to help you complete your application.
You can also get help from an experienced adviser, for example at a Citizens Advice Bureau. Find out where to get advice. Local councils give each community care grant application a priority level: high, medium or low.
Then they decide which priority level of application they can afford to pay each month. For example, a local council might decide that in some months, it can only afford to pay high-priority applications. At other times, it might be able to pay high-, medium- and low-priority applications. You can be given help in kind, rather than cash. For example, you might be awarded travel vouchers, furniture, white goods or retail vouchers. If the grant is for furniture or white goods, it should include delivery and installation or fitting costs.
This applies if:. Check eligibility and apply online. We are currently unable to take applications over the phone. If you can't apply online then you can:. The fastest way is to apply for a grant online, free access to the internet is available in some of our local facilities if need be. We aim to process your application within a further 15 working days after we receive it.
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