Disabled facilities grants are available from the Council to make it easier for disabled people to get into their homes, move around their homes more freely and also to provide access to essential facilities so that they can manage as independently as possible.

In deciding what adaptations a disabled person needs to their home the Council's Environmental Health Officer seeks the advice of a Community Occupational Therapist who works for Cumbria County Council Social Services Department. The Occupational Therapist makes a home visit to assess the disabled person's abilities and gives practical advice on any adaptations that may be necessary. The Occupational Therapist's recommendations form the basis for offering disabled facilities grants.

As with all grants the Council must have regard to a grant applicant's ability to pay for the proposed adaptation and the Government has introduced a Test of Financial resources which works out how much an applicant is expected to pay towards the cost of the adaptation. If the cost is higher than the contribution, the grant covers the difference. In some cases it is possible for the full cost of the work to be covered by the grant. In other cases the applicant will be expected to pay for the work in full. It all depends on each individual applicant's financial circumstances. The type of work that can be covered by disabled facilities grants can be quite wide ranging, however it broadly falls into two categories, i.e. access and amenities.

Access covers getting into the house, moving around the house and getting access to bedroom, bathroom and kitchen facilities and the type of work can include the provision of ramps, widening doorways and providing stairlifts or vertical lifts. The above measures can ensure a disabled person's access into and around their home, however the nature of some disabilities mean that a person cannot use the existing facilities that they have and so more specialist provision must be considered, for example, where someone becomes confined to a wheelchair it may be necessary to remove their bath and provide a level access shower, electrical sockets and light switches may need to be repositioned so that they can be reached from a wheelchair and in some cases it may also be necessary to adapt the kitchen fittings so that they can be used from a wheelchair.

Adaptations can vary from the fairly simple, e.g. the installation of a stairlift to the quite extensive, e.g. the provision of a ground floor extension to house bedroom and shower room facilities, however it is not possible to cover every type of adaptation that can be carried out because very much each person has their individual needs and the professional expertise of the Environmental Health Officer and Occupational Therapist are used in consultation with the disabled person to decide on the most appropriate adaptation.