Your local council must do a needs assessment if it knows or thinks you need care and support.

The council must do a needs assessment even if you don’t have an autism diagnosis and even if you don’t seem to have high support needs. That means that is doesn’t matter what your IQ is, whether you have other disabilities or not, or whether services are likely to be provided to you – you are still entitled to an assessment.

Your local authority's website should tell you how to apply for a needs assessment. You could use our letter template to ask for an assessment.

There is no time limit for your local authority to do the needs assessment. If you haven’t had a reply within six weeks, contact them to find out what is happening.

They should ask you whether you prefer English or Welsh from the start. Your language preference should not delay the process.

The assessment

The assessor

The assessment can be done by one person alone, as long as they don’t need specialist advice to work out whether you are eligible for support.

The location

A social worker or a community care officer will usually visit you at home to do the assessment. Sometimes they might want to do it over the phone or online, but they have to think about whether this makes it harder for you to take part.

If they don’t offer you a home visit, but you think you need one, tell the local authority why. For example, you could say that the difficulties that you have are clearer face-to-face, or that you would like a family member or advocate to be there to help explain your difficulties to the assessor.

If you do not have mental capacity, then a face to face assessment should be arranged.

Having someone with you

You can have a family member, friend or advocate with you during the assessment.

If you have a carer, your local authority should involve them in the assessment, as long as you are happy with this. If you can’t take part fully in the assessment without help from someone else, and there isn’t an appropriate person who can help you, your local authority must provide an advocate for you.

The questions

The assessment looks at what you can do, and what you can do with the help of friends and family. The questions might include how you manage everyday tasks such as washing, shopping, dressing and cooking, or how well you do certain things. You might want to write down all the areas that you feel you need support with before the assessment.

The assessment should be proportionate to your needs. This means that your local authority might not have to do a full assessment. They must focus on your well-being and on the things you want to be able to achieve (your personal outcomes).

The assessment should assume that you are the best person to judge your own well-being and they should listen to what outcomes you would like to achieve. This is called being person-centred and social services has a duty to work in this way.

Eligibility

Not everyone who has a needs assessment will be entitled to get support. Your local authority will help you to get support if your assessment meets all four of these conditions.

1. Your needs are to do with age, disability, dependence on alcohol or drugs, or other similar circumstances.
2. Your needs are to do with being able to take care of yourself (eg washing, cooking and cleaning), to work or study, to have a social life and involvement in your community, or to take care of a child. Or your needs are to do with communication or protecting you from abuse and neglect.
3. There is no way of meeting your needs with the support of family, friends, community or your own resources.
4. There is no alternative to the local authority providing care and/or support either directly or through a direct payment.

You don’t have to have tried to use services available in the community to know that they can’t meet your needs. The social worker must show you the service and record how it can meet your needs before deciding that you are not eligible for local authority support.

If your carer says that they can and will meet your needs, the assessor could decide that you aren’t eligible for local authority support. This could limit your right to choose who cares for you. To make sure that all your eligible needs are identified, your informal carer could wait until an eligibility decision has been made before they confirm that they are willing and able to help care for you.
 

If you are not eligible

If your needs don’t meet the eligibility criteria, you won’t get care and support services from the local authority. Social services must write to you and let you know that you aren’t eligible, and why.

They should tell you how to get ‘preventative’ support services, such as befriending or social groups. They might refer you to their information, advice and assistance service or to a community-based service. They must record how your needs will be met by preventative and community-based services.

The local authority doesn’t have a duty to meet needs that it can’t support, such as access to healthcare, housing or education.

Find local support groups and projects.
 

Planning your support

If you are eligible for support, social services should develop a care and support plan with you, usually after a needs assessment has taken place. The plan will say how your needs will be met. It will help you to get the care you need and also help your friends and family understand how they can better support you. 

If you have been assessed as needing a service, then the local authority must arrange this. You might have to wait a short time for your support to start. You have a right to complain if you have to wait a long time (eg more than six weeks) without getting any services.

In urgent cases, or of you are at risk of abuse or neglect, social services can put support in place without an assessment being completed or while the assessment is taking place.

Reviewing your support

Your local authority must review your support at least once a year to make sure that it still meets your needs. It should also review the plan if you tell the authority that there has been a significant change, eg your carer wants to go back to work.

Your local authority should not take away your support, or make big changes to it, without doing a full review of your care and support needs first. If it decides that you no longer qualify for local authority support, it should give you information about other help available.

In doing the review, social services is not allowed to aim to reduce your support for no reason or aim to save money.

Find out more

National Autism Team - national autism website for Wales
Codes of practice and statutory guidance for the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014
Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 - easy read guide
Dewis Cymru - Care and support plans