Community care grants
A community care grant is intended to help you and your family stay independent in the community by helping you pay for items such as furniture, clothing or removal expenses. There is no ceiling on the amount you can apply for. To qualify, you must be on a low income. You are automatically treated as having a low income if you get:
•universal credit; or
•income support; or
•income-based jobseeker’s allowance; or
•income-related employment and support allowance; or
•pension credit.
Even if you are not on one of these benefits, your local authority can still decide that you are on a low income.
A community care grant can be paid:
•to help you, a member of your family or a person for whom you care establish yourself (or her/himself) in the community following a stay in institutional or residential accommodation;
•to help you, a member of your family or a person for whom you care remain in the community rather than enter institutional or residential accommodation;
•to help you set up home in the community as part of a planned resettlement programme, following a period during which you have been homeless or without a settled way of life;
•to ease exceptional pressures on you or your family;
•to allow you, or your partner, to care for a prisoner or young offender on temporary release.