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What is community care?

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Community Care describes the services and support which help people to continue to live independently at home. A Health and Social Care Trust is the organisation responsible for helping you to access these services.

The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSS&PS) is responsible for health and personal social services in Northern Ireland. It provides guidance on how care should be delivered. This guidance is the same for each Health Trust area. There is one Health and Social Care Board and five Health and Social Care Trusts which provide integrated health and social care services throughout Northern Ireland.

Health and Social Care Trusts manage and administer hospitals, health centres, residential homes, day centres and other health and social care facilities. Contact details for each Trust are provided in the Further Support Factsheet 6.

What support is available?

Assistance is available to support individual personal and practicalcare needs associated with mental health, learning or physical difficulties, hearing or sight problems, or the challenges associated with getting older.

Each person has different requirements for their care. To continue living in your own home, you may need help with personal care such as washing
and dressing. You may also require practical support with daily living such as cleaning or making meals. You may benefit from special equipment or adaptations to your home that will enable you to carry out daily activities.

The range of community care services available to support you are:

  • Domiciliary care (more commonly known as home help)
  • Equipment aids and home adaptations (grab rails, hand rails or stair lifts)
  • Meals on wheels
  • Day care (provided in day centres)
  • Respite care (non-residential)

Who is entitled to these services?

You will be entitled to receive community care services after your individual needs have been identified by a community care assessment. This assessment is carried out by Social Services. Your daily life may be enhanced by services if you have additional needs as a result of:

  • an illness
  • physical or mental difficulties
  • a long time spent in institutional care and you require support adapting to life within a community setting.

Download

opens link in new window Factsheet 1 - What is community care? (PDF 176KB)
 

Age NI would like to acknowledge The Law Centre of Northern Ireland and The Ladies, St Mary's Parish Church Friendship Circle, Comber for their contribution to the Community Care Factsheets.

www.ageni.org/communitycare

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Home & care publications

  • Guides and factsheets aimed to keep you informed about issues surrounding home and care.

    Download and share our Community Care factsheets.

      View all home & care downloads Help with Downloads

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      Most downloads on this website are PDFs. We use this format to ensure that the document looks the same on everyone’s computer (website pages, by contrast, appear differently depending on how people have got their computer set up).

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      1. Go to opens link in new window http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/
      2. Click ‘Download’.
      3. Wait for the window to offer you the option to ‘Run’, then choose this option.
      4. Click ‘Next’.
      5. Click ‘Install’
      6. Wait for the window to offer you the option to ‘Finish’, then choose this option.

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      You can use Adobe Reader to read a PDF out loud with the following shortcut keys:

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      You can convert a PDF document into a text file for use with other software and hardware such as Braille printers by opening the PDF and choosing ‘Save as text’ from the File menu.

    Useful websites

    • Advice from NI Direct government services on support and safety in your home.

    • The Warm Homes scheme is funded by the Department for Social Development, to make your home warmer, healthier and more energy efficient.

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