What is a Disabled Facilities Grant?
A Disabled Facilities Grant helps towards the cost of adapting your home to help you to be more independent or your carer manage more easily. This may be getting about your home, doing everyday tasks such as bathing, going up and down stairs, or getting in and out of the house.
If you need any alteration ( we call it an Adaptation) to your home to help you to be more independent or your carer to manage more easily, then a Disabled Facilities Grant may provide funding for this.
Adaptations can only be considered after your difficulties have been assessed, they are usually the last resort after such options as rehabilitation are considered. Adaptations costing less than £1000 are usually arranged by Adult Services through the Occupational Therapist.
Who can enquire about a Disabled Facilities Grant?
Anyone living in (or caring for someone in) the Bradford Metropolitan District, who has a ‘permanent and substantial disability, and who has significant difficulties managing everyday tasks within the home.
What can I get help for?
The grant is provided for essential adaptations to give you better freedom of movement into and around your house so that you can use the essential facilities in it, for example:
- Taking a bath out and installing a shower
- Installing a stairlift or providing a downstairs bathroom
- Widening doorways and putting in ramps
- Improved access to enable the disabled person to care for a child or spouse etc.
- Ensuring the safety of the disabled person by, for example, fitting gates to stairs or safety glass in doors and windows
- Changing the heating system, or adding more heaters where this is necessary for your disability
We will also consider changing things to make it easier for your carer.
How do I get help?
First you will need an assessment from the Occupational Therapy (OT) Service. They accept referrals by telephone from service users directly. Please telephone 01274 435400 Monday to Friday for this service.
An OT will visit you at home to discuss your needs.
If it is decided that an adaptation will be suitable for you, a Housing Technical Officer from the Adaptations Team will also visit to make sure the adaptations can reasonably and practically be done to your home.
This may mean that you have to consider adaptations that are not what you expected.
If everyone agrees that the adaptations will meet your needs and can practically be done you will be able to apply for a Disabled Facilities grant to see if you can get help to pay for them.
The maximum Grant allowed is up to £30,000 and is means tested to establish if you will have to make any contribution yourself.
Will I have to pay for the adaptation?
We have to do a ‘means test’ to see if you have a contribution to make to any grant for adaptations to be carried out. This means you will have to provide us with details of your income, benefits, savings etc.
With this information we will then be able to tell you if you have anything to pay and if so how much it will be.
If the disabled person is on income support or pension credit, or is a child in most cases there is no contribution.
The maximum grant that can be given is £30,000 but most adaptations we carry out do not cost this much.
Work must NOT start until the grant is approved
Important information about your Disabled Facilities Grant Enquiry
We have brought in deadlines (or time limits) for both our officers to process some stages of the grant and for you to respond to our requests. This means that you will get your adaptation as quickly as possible.
To help you to meet these deadlines, every time we send you a letter;
- We will tell you what you need to do;
- We will tell you how quickly you need to do it, by giving you a deadline; (a date by which it must be done).
- It is important that you do what we are asking you to do as soon as possible — but always before the deadline.
We believe that these deadlines are reasonable and that you should be able to meet them.
If exceptional circumstances exist which prevent you from meeting a deadline, you must let the CHES Admin Support Team know, before the deadline has passed! Please telephone 01274 434520.
We will do everything we can to process your grant quickly. Please help us to do this by meeting the deadlines that we have given you.
Please remember your grant will be cancelled if you don’t meet your deadlines!
Contact information
For further information or to make an enquiry about Disabled Facilities Grants please contact either:
Adaptations Team, Climate, Housing, Employment and Skills. Telephone: 01274 434520
OR
Occupational Therapy Service, Housing Options Team. Telephone: 01274 435400
Both located at : Jacob's Well, Bradford, BD1 5RW.
