Parental contributions for disabled children's social-care services

Please provide the following information held by your authority concerning parental contributions for disabled children's social-care services. For the purposes of this request, please exclude accommodation and services provided under section 20 of the Children Act 1989.

1. Does your authority currently seek or require parents to make a financial contribution towards any disabled children's social-care services falling within the scope of this request?

2. If so, please identify whether parental contributions may apply to: a. services provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989; b. services provided pursuant to section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970; c. short breaks not involving section 20 accommodation; and d. direct payments made in respect of any of the above.

3. Please provide a copy of, or link to, any current policy, procedure, guidance, financial assessment framework, staff instruction or other recorded document governing parental contributions for these services.

4. Does your authority carry out a means test or financial assessment of the parent or parents when determining any such contribution?

5. Please provide any recorded policy, methodology, criteria or guidance governing that means test or financial assessment, including, where applicable:

a. income and capital taken into account;

b. income or capital thresholds;

c. allowances, disregards or deductions;

d. treatment of disability-related expenditure;

e. any minimum-income or protected-income level; and

f. the formula, calculation, tariff, percentage or other methodology used to calculate the parental contribution.

6. Please provide any recorded information specifying:

a. any maximum contribution, percentage cap, weekly or monthly cap, or other limit on the parental contribution; and b. whether the methodology permits a parental contribution equal to 100% of the cost of the relevant service.

7. If different formulas, thresholds or caps apply to different types of provision within the scope of this request, please provide the recorded information showing those differences.

8. If the authority does not have a standard written means-testing methodology, please provide any other recorded guidance, instructions or criteria showing how the amount that a parent can reasonably be expected to contribute is determined.

9. For each of the financial years 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26, please provide, where centrally recorded: a. the number of families with disabled children asked to complete a means test or financial assessment in connection with services within the scope of this request;

b. the number of families from whom a parental contribution was sought; and

c. the total amount of parental contributions collected. For question 9, I am not requesting a manual review of individual case files where these figures are not centrally recorded. If the requested figures are not held in this form, please state what relevant aggregate figures are held. Where information is held separately by statutory basis or service type, please provide that breakdown if it can be extracted without a manual case-file review. Where any requested information is already publicly available, a direct link to the relevant material is sufficient.

1. Lincolnshire Children's Services do not seek or require a financial contribution towards social care services which have been assessed and identified under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 as a social care need

2-3. There are no documents pertaining to this as this is not a procedure followed by Lincolnshire Children's services.

4. For children there or no means test or financial assessment of parents to determine services as there is no contribution.

5-9. N/a