Portsmouth City Council: charging income, benefits, and partnership working in finance and adult social care

Portsmouth City Council faced challenges in collecting income from charging. Close collaboration between adult social care and finance teams worked to improve residents’ experiences, maximise benefits and ensure timely, fair charging. A co-located visiting finance team delivers early financial assessments, home-based benefit maximisation and collaborative decision making for clients with deputyship. The team’s integrated approach has reduced delays, simplified procedures, increased accessibility and improved income collection without compromising care.

The effective collection of income from charging, fair and timely financial assessments and robust debt management are essential components of a financially sustainable adult social care system. Breaking down siloes between adult social care and finance teams can support better outcomes for residents, reduce financial risk and uphold the principles of transparency, equity and efficiency in adult social care charging.

The challenge

Portsmouth is a small unitary city authority (population 210,000), with pockets of affluence in an area of high deprivation (49th in MSOA terms).

Residents often discover that social care is charged for at the time when they are seeking support, with an assumption that it is free at the point of use like the NHS. This can often be a time of stress, and residents naturally worry about whether they will be able to afford a social care charge. Therefore, ensuring a swift response and a timely assessment of finances is key.

Ensuring that income is collected from adult social care charging is increasingly difficult with the rising cost of living and an increase in independent living. Collaborative working between adult social care and finance has been developed to explore more efficient ways of working together for the best outcome for residents.

Ensuring benefits maximisation for residents – benefit applications are lengthy and complicated with various underlying premiums, often requiring additional applications to other Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) departments. Residents require support with benefit applications, and there are limited visiting services in Portsmouth that offer welfare benefit advice and support. The adult social care financial assessment and benefits (FAB) team visits the majority of residents receiving adult social care services, including self-funders, to ensure benefit maximisation and help support residents in being financially independent for longer.

Portsmouth has seen an increase of 29% in referrals to appointeeship and deputyship services in the last year. With more residents being unable to deal with their finances and the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) taking up to 32 weeks to award deputyship orders, this places a financial burden on the council for the collection of adult social care charges.

The action

The corporate finance team is responsible for adult social care finance, with charging, billing, appointee and deputyship, direct payments, debt recovery and brokerage answering to a single social care finance manager.

Team financial policies are accessible to social care staff, and the team offer one-to-one consultations with practitioners, training sessions at team meetings and induction for new staff.

The team have designed a series of intranet resources for social care staff (including general advice and policy documents) covering care purchasing and payment, the adult social care finance system, financial assessments and benefits, debt recovery and direct payments.

Adult social care in finance in Portsmouth has worked to understand performance and enabled social care staff to refer to them while they are with the resident, which can lead to a ‘light touch’ assessment in some circumstances, giving the resident timely information and maximising resources to focus on home visits for residents who need them.

The adult social care FAB team has access to the DWP system Searchlight and work to obtain all financial information relating to the resident in advance of the financial assessment to reduce the requirement for them to provide all their financial information.

There are joint visits between adult social care and finance for debt recovery to best support residents in reaching a position of being able to pay, ensuring welfare is considered throughout and prior to any legal/enforcement action.

There are joint annual reviews between adult social care and the client financial protection team for clients managed under deputyship, ensuring client wellbeing and financial best interests are upheld.

The finance manager is an integral part of the adult social care senior leadership team.

Any complaints are responded to as a joint response from finance and ASC to ensure any learning is identified and fed back to the wider teams.

Project steering groups are a collaboration between adult social care and finance staff to ensure all aspects of decision making are considered and their impact assessed.

The outcome

The response time for FAB assessment referrals is approximately one week, with the exception of year-end when typically this increases to five weeks, subject to resident/representative availability. In the financial year 2024/25, ContrOCC reporting highlights that the FAB team has been able to complete 409 pre-service assessments (advising residents of their care charges prior to the care provision being recorded), similar to 2023/24, when 460 pre-service assessments were completed.

Work is continuing to develop in this area to better understand the correlation between pre-service assessments, the number of commissioned services and the type of service.

Portsmouth have received some positive feedback from the OPG court visitors praising us for our ability to visit all residents managed under deputyship at least annually and praising the knowledge base we have surrounding our residents and their needs. Regular joint visits between finance and adult social care are completed for deputyship residents and all best interest decisions are collaborative to ensure both welfare and finances are considered.

There is direct contact for residents at what can be a stressful time. For home visiting, the FAB team aims to visit all residents in receipt of adult social care services in order to complete a holistic disability-related expenditure (DRE) assessment to ensure charging is fair and transparent.

A benefit maximisation and application support service is offered to all adult social care residents via the FAB team.

Financial assessments are available to residents/their representatives via the system portal.

Reflection

The finance team take direct calls from residents and can provide responsive support. They are available to social work colleagues and offer guidance and training to enhance and improve practice.

The team have worked on their processes and have a minimal waiting list for financial assessment. This mitigates debt and disagreement around charges.

Residents are invoiced in arrears for services, and due to the timeliness of the financial assessment, residents don’t have large, backdated invoices; their first invoice contains the last month’s care received. Billing cycles and invoicing is clearly explained to residents during their financial assessments, and direct debits are completed at the point of assessment to ensure effective collection of income.

Financial assessment reviews are completed annually using DWP and internal systems to ensure clients are informed of their April increases in advance of commencement.

The finance team work closely with team managers across adult social care to ensure that care provision orders are recorded and authorised in a timely manner.

The FAB, debt recovery, direct payment support and client financial protection teams are visiting teams and will offer support to clients in their homes or other venue most appropriate for the client. The team can work remotely, accessing details within the client’s home to ensure a more efficient service can be offered, avoiding unnecessary delays and duplication of work and creating more staff resources, with limited follow-up work required after visits.

7 July 2025