Are you a carer?

Adult Carer Support Plans/Self-directed Support

What is an Adult Carer Support Plan?

An Adult Carer Support Plan begins with a meaningful conversation with your lead worker about you and your caring role and what impact it has on your life. This conversation will often start alongside the conversation about the support that you are proving to your cared-for person and will help inform who is best placed to support you and how. An Adult Carer Support Plan can help you access the right support at the right time from a range of sources and in some cases, can be used to access Self-directed Support.

It may be that it is more appropriate for your Adult Carer Support Plan to be progressed by a Carer Support Worker from Lanarkshire Carers if your needs are identified as likely to be at a low to moderate level. However, if it is likely that your needs will meet the eligibility criteria, then South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership may take the lead in progressing your Adult Carer Support Plan.

It is important that you feel comfortable enough to have an open and honest conversation with your Lead worker about your caring role, so it may be that you arrange to speak separately with them away from the person you care for, or you may feel more able to express yourself by providing written/emailed information about your caring role and the impact that this has on you.

The Adult Carer Support Plan conversation will focus on areas that are important to you, such as what you wish to maintain, change, or improve and may include some or all of the areas below:

Health and wellbeing
Life balance
Living environment
Relationships
Finances
Employment and training
Future planning

The conversation focuses on helping you to:

identify your support needs
identify what outcomes you would like to achieve
look at what you can do to achieve your outcomes yourself and
what others can do to help support you.

The conversation that you have with your Lead Worker will be recorded in your Adult Carer Support Plan where your identified outcomes are established, and a copy of the plan will be provided to you. Your Adult Carer Support Plan may include details of:

changes which can be made by yourself
information, advice and supports from Lanarkshire Carers that may be of benefit
community/universal supports or supports that can be provided by South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership

Not all carers will require support, however, eligibility criteria have been set to ensure those carers who are most in need are able to get the right level of support at the right time. Eligibility Criteria is a framework that is used for determining whether any support needs meet the threshold for support from the local authority.

Eligibility thresholds

Caring has no impact - needs met

Category	Impact	Level of need
Category 1	Caring has low impact	Low level needs
Category 2	Caring has moderate impact	Moderate level needs
Category 3	Caring has substantial impact	Substantial level needs
Category 4	Caring has critical impact	Critical level needs

Adult Carers can access information and advice form Lanarkshire Carers, who also provide support services for carers who live in Lanarkshire. They provide a range of services that can support you in your caring role. This type of support can be useful if your caring role has a low to moderate impact and this preventative support can help avoid a crisis arising, as well as helping you sustain your caring role in the longer term if you so choose.

However, if it has been identified that your caring role is having a critical or substantial impact, then the local authority has a duty to provide support for your ‘eligible needs’. This may include the provision of funding for replacement care or a period of respite for the person you care for to allow you to have a complete break from your caring role, for example.

Remember, you can still receive support from Lanarkshire Carers or community resources to help meet your low to moderate needs at the same time as receiving support from the local authority to help meet any critical and substantial needs that have been identified.

You can find out more about resources for carers on our useful contacts and resources page.

The Social Care (Self-Directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 is an Act of the Scottish Parliament that ensures that local authorities offer self-directed support to anyone who requires support services, including unpaid carers who require support to help them maintain their caring role where they meet the local eligibility criteria.

If it has been recognised that you have eligible needs as a carer, then in some cases you may be offered funding to help you meet specific outcomes that have been identified when progressing your Adult Carer Support Plan. If this is the case, then you will have access to the four Self-directed Support Options:

Option 1 - Direct payment
Option 2 - Individual budget
Option 3 - Arranged support
Option 4 - A mix of the above options

The use of any funding that is offered should be discussed and agreed with your allocated lead worker. These discussions should include:

how the support will be delivered to meet the agreed outcomes
what form this should take
ensuring that there is a transparent and clear link to the Adult Carer Support Plan.

We recognise that some supported people may have more than one carer. When this is the case, any funded support which has been agreed will be available to the main carer only, to allow them to work towards achieving their identified outcomes. Where this funded support is used to access respite or replacement care, all carers who are providing care to the same person are able to benefit from this support.

A date will be agreed with you and your lead worker to review your Adult Carer Support Plan to make sure that it still reflects your current situation. At this time, your lead worker will get in touch with you to have a further conversation with you about your caring role and the impact that it is having on your life. This will include looking at your agreed outcomes and identifying whether all or some of these have been met, or whether other assistance is needed to help you achieve them.

Your situation may change over time, for example, there might be a change in your own health or in the health of the person that you look after, which means that a review of your Adult Carer Support Plan outwith normal timescales may be necessary.

The review may identify that some of your outcomes have been met, or that they are no longer appropriate. The level of support you receive may change as a result of this review, as it will be reflective of your situation at that time. This could mean that any previously agreed Self-directed Support funding may be subject to change, for example.

If you care for someone with a terminal illness, you should be offered an Adult Carer Support Plan with certain timeframes.

For more information please see the Scottish Government Guidance.

To help you think about what is important to you as a carer, you can use the following headings to start thinking about your caring role and to work out what is working for you right now, what could be better and how you might like things to look in the future.

It might be useful to take some notes of these thoughts so you can share them with your lead worker when you meet to start your conversation.

Your caring role

Think about who you care for, the type of care you provide and how often you provide this. Do you have any other caring responsibilities? Are you able to manage your caring role at this time?

Current supports in place

Are there any services in place to support you in your caring role? Do you get help from friends or family? Do you link in with any community-based supports?

Breaks from caring

Consider whether you get regular breaks from your caring role. Breaks from caring can be anything from being able to take small amounts of time away from your caring role at home or in the garden for example, to having a complete break away from your caring role for a period of time.

Health and wellbeing

Think about how caring impacts both your physical and emotional health. Do you have any health conditions of your own that are impacted by caring for someone else? Are there any aids/adaptations in place to assist you with your caring role, for example moving and handling equipment?

Relationships

Consider your relationship with the person/people you care for and how your caring role impacts on your key relationships with family, friends, and those within your community.

Life balance

Do you feel that you have a life outside of your caring role? Are you able to have a social life? Are you able to take time for leisure activities that you enjoy? Can you engage in hobbies and interests?

Employment and training

Think about how caring impacts your ability to work or to access education or training. Have you had to give up work, or reduce the number of hours that you work to allow you to care? Do you have access to training you feel would help you support the person you care for?

Finances

Consider the impact that your caring role has on your own financial situation. Are you aware of any grants/benefits that you might be entitled to and how to access these? Are there any legal arrangements in place to help you support the person you care for with their finances, such as Power of Attorney/Guardianship?

Living environment

Think about the impact that your caring role has on your living environment. Do you use any technology to support your caring role, such as Alexa, door sensors, etc. Are you able to maintain good levels of hygiene within the home? Are there any safety issues to consider?

Future planning

Have you thought about the future? Do you have an emergency plan in place? Have you considered anticipatory care planning?

There may be other areas of your life that you feel that are impacted by your caring role and that are not covered here. Please speak with your Lead Worker if you would like to discuss these further.

The work of unpaid carers is very much appreciated and recognised by everyone at South Lanarkshire University Health and Social Care Partnership.

The Partnership works closely with commissioned partners Lanarkshire Carers, NHS Lanarkshire and a wide range of local services to provide a package of support for unpaid carers.

As part of our ongoing commitment to improving help we offer the unpaid caring population in South Lanarkshire, a post of Carers’ Lead for the local authority was created in 2023. This role is focused on service development and workforce upskilling in relation to the range of issues impacting unpaid carers.

The Carers’ Lead has focused on introducing a new way by which South Lanarkshire Council Social Work will work with carers in relation to identifying needs and life goals. Designed in partnership with Lanarkshire Carers, the new style SLC Adult Carer Support Plans will be introduced in 2025 and will be based around a conversation with the carer in relation to their role and what outcomes they want to achieve.

You may be aware that back in 2019 we introduced eligibility criteria which positioned the organisation as supporting those supported people and carers at the highest level of need.

Subsequently, we introduced a banding system to ensure a more standardised delivery of funded support to unpaid carers within the local authority. Since the change, carers who receive support from the Partnership have been brought into the new support system. There will be no changes to carers’ funded support until all circumstances and needs are fully considered.

If you or a loved one are an unpaid carer and would like some help and advice, information on the supports available in South Lanarkshire, they can be found in our useful contacts and resources page and also on Lanarkshire Carers website.