Effective Financial Assessment
Significant efficiency savings can be made through improving the timing of financial assessments.
The issues
- Delayed financial assessment results in 'free care'
- 'Free care' costs a council £300,000 - £500,000 p.a.
- Delay in charge indication causes anxiety / refused services
- Confused customers leading to increase in bad debts
The solutions
- Financial screening at first point of contact
- Book financial assessment / joint approach with DWP
- Co-ordinate visits centrally / set targets
- Notify changes before care starts
- Timely invoicing
The benefits
If the financial assessment is booked at the initial point of contact (in parallel with the needs assessment), the financial assessment can be completed well before the start of care. Based on calculations from an average council’s data, this can result in a prevented loss of council income per year of £589,680.
The experience of council partners
CSED has worked with council colleagues in Staffordshire, Durham, North Yorkshire and Oxfordshire to help test these different approaches and solutions. For more information on effective financial assessment and the experience of our council partners, download the detailed solution PDF document on this page.
A streamlined financial re-assessment process developed in London Borough of Hillingdon
Hillingdon has recently successfully re-engineered the financial re-assessment process to achieve cashable efficiency savings in administration and increase the level of service user contributions collected. Open the full case study PDF to find out more.
