Treatment of income

Treatment of income

When calculating how much you’d pay for a care home, your income is treated in one of 3 ways:

• counted in full
• partially disregarded
• fully disregarded

Income counted in full

Income counted in full includes:

• most social security benefits
• Attendance Allowance (permanent residents)
• Disability Living Allowance care component (permanent residents)
• occupational or personal pensions (no spouse or civil partner)
• annuity income
• income from certain types of disregarded capital
• trust income

However, it depends on your situation as to whether your Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and also Attendance Allowance (AA) is withdrawn.

Residents who receive local council support with their care home fees would only receive these payments for the first 28 days in residential accommodation. However, residents who don’t receive local council help with their care home fees would continue to receive DLA and AA payments. Therefore if someone was to receive local authority help with their care home fees and their DLA and AA payments were about to stop, DLA and AA payments would not need to be taken account of in the financial assessment.

Income disregarded

50% disregard of occupational or personal pensions:

• only applies to residents with a spouse or civil partner
• must pass 50% to spouse or civil partner at home to receive the disregard
• if more than 50% passed, only 50% disregarded. If less, no disregard applies
• not means-tested

Find out more about the National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Regulations 1992

Further information

The payment of care home fees is a complex subject and depends on many things which are unique to you.

If you want detailed information or personal advice, you can ask an experienced independent adviser.

Advice Direct Scotland – phone 0808 800 9060, 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

Age Scotland who have information on paying for care homes, or phone their helpline on 0800 12 44 222.