Money and rights

What can you ask a council for?

You can ask for an assessment of your needs. That request is the door to everything else on this page, and it does not depend on your income, on a diagnosis, or on anyone agreeing that your situation is serious enough. The Care Act 2014 carries the assessment at section 9, titled Assessment of an adult's needs for care and support. A person who looks after you can ask to be assessed too, in their own right, under section 10.

Care Act 2014, sections 9 and 10. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Before any of that, the Act sets the purpose the council is working towards. Section 1 is titled Promoting individual well-being, and it is the section to quote when a decision feels as though it has been taken about you rather than with you. Well-being is not a mood in this Act: it is the thing the council is supposed to be promoting when it decides anything about an adult.

Care Act 2014, section 1, Promoting individual well-being. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Where do the eligibility criteria come from?

They come from two places at once, which is why they are hard to look up. The Act carries the idea at section 13, titled The eligibility criteria. The criteria themselves are set out in a statutory instrument, the Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, where regulation 2 covers adults who need care and support and regulation 3 covers carers.

Care Act 2014, section 13. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026. Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, SI 2015 No. 313, text as made, legislation.gov.uk, regulations 2 and 3, read on 3 September 2026.

This handbook does not print the wording of regulation 2 here, because printing a paraphrase of an eligibility test is how people end up being told they do not qualify by a page that has no standing to say so. The text is short and it is one click away. What is worth knowing before you open it is that the test has more than one limb, and that a council decides each limb on what the assessment recorded.

What is a care and support plan?

It is the written record of what the council has decided to meet and how. The Act sets out the steps the council has to take at section 24, and the plan itself at section 25. In practice the plan is the document you will spend the most time arguing about, because it is the only place where the words needs, outcomes and money sit on the same page. Follow the chain step by step in the route map, which lines up all fourteen stages with the section that carries each one.

Care Act 2014, sections 24 and 25. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

What is a personal budget, and what is it not?

A personal budget is a figure attached to the plan. Section 26 of the Care Act 2014 is titled Personal budget, and the budget belongs to the plan rather than to a bank account: it is what the council has worked out that meeting the agreed needs costs. It is not pocket money, it is not a grant, and it is not the same thing as a benefit paid by the Department for Work and Pensions. If you want the money paid across so that you arrange the support yourself, that is a direct payment, and it lives in a different part of the Act.

Care Act 2014, section 26, Personal budget. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

The chain that takes the plan and the figure apart, one link at a time, is written up in assessment to plan, which runs from the assessment to the budget and ends with the question of who holds the money.

Who can help you say what you want?

Section 67 of the Care Act 2014 is titled Involvement in assessments, plans etc., and it is the section that carries independent advocacy. It matters most at the two moments when a decision is being written down rather than discussed: the assessment and the plan. Ask about it before the assessment starts, not afterwards. Independent advice and advocacy sets out what to ask for and when.

Care Act 2014, section 67, Involvement in assessments, plans etc. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Which guidance are councils working from?

One document, and it is public. The Care and support statutory guidance was first published on 29 July 2016 and was last updated on 22 July 2025. It runs to several hundred pages and it is the text a social worker is trained on, so knowing its update date tells you whether the advice you have been given is current.

Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, first published 29 July 2016, last updated 22 July 2025, GOV.UK, read on 3 September 2026.

What does this rubric cover, page by page?

Six pages sit under this door. Start with your rights under the law if you are at the beginning, or with the dossier that follows the chain from assessment to plan if an assessment has already happened. Taking part locally covers the part of a plan that is about a life rather than a rota, and what a provider must do is the other side of the same arrangement: what the law asks of the organisation that turns up.

Sources read for this page

• Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
• Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025
• Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, SI 2015 No. 313, text as made
• Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England 2023-24, published 31 October 2024

Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.