20.Section 2 enables the local authority to provide services to carers following a carer’s assessment under section 1. The local authority must consider that assessment and then decide whether the carer has any needs in relation to the care which he provides for the person cared for. The authority must then decide whether or not it can provide services to meet those needs and whether or not to provide them.
21.Services to carers are not defined in the Act. The local authority may provide any services which in their view will help the carer care for the person cared for.
Those services may take the form of physical help, for example assistance around the house, or other forms of support such as training or counselling for the carer.
22.Sometimes there will be services which, although they are provided to the carer, could be delivered to the person cared for by way of community care services. (For the definition of community care services, see section 46(3) of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.) Such services may be delivered to the person cared for if both the carer and the person cared for agree but may not, except in prescribed circumstances, include anything of an intimate nature. There is a power to set out in regulations what is, or is not, a service of an intimate nature. Services of an intimate nature might include dressing, feeding, lifting, washing or bathing the person cared for.
Commentary on Sections Section 2: Services for carers