Announcement of Methodological Changes to the Personal Social Services Survey of Adult Carers in England, 2014-15

As a result of the changes to the national data collections for adult social care following the zero-based review¹ there have been a number of changes to the auxiliary data that will be collected with the survey data for 2014-15. These are:

The data item ‘Primary Client Type of the Cared-for Person’ has been replaced with ‘Primary Support Reason of the Cared-for Person’. This will mean that it is not possible to make direct comparisons between these variables between 2012-13 (the previous survey) and 2014-15. More information about the distinction between Primary Client Type and Primary Support Reason is available in the documentation supporting the Equalities and Classifications Framework (EQ-CL).

A new data item has been added to indicate whether the cared-for person is known to the local authority, and if so, whether they are eligible for inclusion in the new social care activity collection (Short and Long Term Support; SALT) as a long-term supported client. This acts as a feeder-question for the data item on direct payments and personal budgets for the cared-for person.

New response options for the data item ‘On-going Direct Payment or Personal Budget for Cared-for Person’ will mean that it is not possible to make a direct comparison between data for 2012-13 and 2014-15 for this data item.

New response options and a new reference period for the data item ‘Direct Payment or Personal Budget for Carer in Previous 12 Months’ will mean that it is not possible to make a direct comparison between data for 2012-13 and 2014-15 for this data item.

These changes were agreed by the Social Services User Survey Group, which includes representatives from the HSCIC, the Department of Health, the Personal Social Services Research Unit, the Care Quality Commission, and local authorities in England. There have been no other changes to the methodology for the survey or to the design of the questionnaire.

In addition to these changes the HSCIC will be introducing a new methodology for calculating results at the regional, council type, and national level. For these calculations, each local authority will become a stratum and a unique set of weights will be calculated for each question by dividing the count of the population of concern by the count of usable responses to that question (the inverse probability of responding to that question) in each local authority. This change will improve the accuracy of the aggregate level results because variability in sampling and response rates between local authorities will be accounted for. The impact of this change will be explored in the Official Statistics report. The change will have no impact on how the results are calculated for each local authority.

Please send any queries about these changes to [email protected].