Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England, 2023-24

Department for Health and Social Care analysts have developed a time series to handle irregularities caused by changes in the data collection and presentation over time of local authority provided or organised social care user numbers. The methodology creates a long-term view of user data from 2003/04 onwards, categorised by age group and support setting.  The methodology set out here, especially the assumptions and caveats, should be taken into account when using this time series.

What this data shows:

• The number of local authority provided or organised social care users from 2003/04 to 2023/24 categorised by age group and support setting. (Source data: SALT and RAP)

This data can be used for:

• Monitoring trends in local authority provided or organised user numbers over time at a national level.

Data

The methodology to produce the time series data table uses data from the Short and Long Term (SALT) collection as is published in the Activity and Finance report. The data used is LTS001b defined as the number of people accessing long term support at the year-end (31 March) by age band and support setting. Before the SALT data collection was created in 2014/15 activity was collected in the Referrals, Assessments, and Packages of Care (RAP) collection, where the data comes from P2s.1a Number of clients on the books to receive community-based services on the last day of the period by primary and secondary client type for the community care figures and S1 Council supported residents at 31 March by type of accommodation and client group for the residential and nursing support setting.

There were also various changes in RAP over the time it was collected, full details are available here on page 96.

In 2009/10 the columns on the RAP P2f and P2s labelled ‘direct payments’ were expanded to include ‘Existing/new Direct Payments and Personal Budgets’. Service users who were receiving council commissioned services via a personal budget or direct payment were only included under this heading and not under the specific service received. This has impacted the data in this publication during that year. The Existing/New Direct Payments & Personal Budgets category in 2009/10 is assumed to be similar to the Direct payments category in other years.

Another notable data change for this publication was in 2010/11 when the ‘Existing/new direct payments and personal budgets’ columns in P2s were changed to record direct payments only, whether delivered through a personal budget or not. All other P2s components of service columns were altered to count clients receiving the given service as a council commissioned service, whether or not this was through a personal budget. This will have impacted the community category in our methodology between 2009/10 and 2010/11.

Historic data in this report is completed to match the Community Care Statistics, Social Services Activity, England- 2013-14, Final Release: Annex M – Compendium 2000-01 – 2013-14. This was compiled in 2013-14 based on historic data. Some of the data in the compendium does not match the published data for individual years due to changes in rounding practices.

The figures in SALT and RAP cover activity for local authorities in England on social care services for adults aged 18 and over, by service provision and primary support reason. They do not include users who access social care without support from the Local Authority. Other caveats associated with the raw data can be found in Appendix A- Data Quality Statement published in the Activity and Finance report.

The figures included in the time series data tables are year-end (LTS001b in SALT) and while the methodology could be applied to in-year data (LTS001a in SALT), DHSC has not done any analysis to confirm it would be the best methodology for in-year data.

Prison settings are not included in this work as this data item was added as a voluntary measure in 2015/2016 and we do not have any estimates for user numbers in this support setting before this time.

Before 2014/15 the community care setting total includes the total users from home care, day care and direct payments, from P2s.1a in Referrals, Assessments and Packages of Care (RAP) collection. The residential care total refers to the sum of the Independent residential and Council-run Care home figures in S1 in Referrals, Assessments and Packages of Care. The nursing care total is the Independent Nursing total in the Referrals, Assessments, and packages of Care.

From 2014/15 the community care setting total care is the total users from any care setting prefixed with the word community in LTS001b in Short and Long Term (SALT) collection Nursing and residential care settings categories are the same as published in SALT where the support setting is nursing and residential support in LTS001b.

The totals in the data tables are basic sums of the rows displayed, therefore these are not the published totals that coincide with SALT or RAP, due to both rounding to suppress small numbers that may lead to identifiable data and the removal of the prison setting category. These caveats should be considered when using this data.

This methodology was developed by DHSC, iteratively trying various other more complex methodologies. All other methodologies created unusual trends that could not be accounted for and could only be assumed to be artefacts of the methodologies themselves. The methodology used here was discussed with colleagues in the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Social Services, NHS England (previously NHS Digital), the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Office for National Statistics and HM Treasury. All agreed the methodology was the best available given the work DHSC had undertaken.

The categories identified in our methodology to include community users before 2014/15 are assumed to be comparable with the community categories included from 2014/15 onwards, this is an assumption based on the analysis and cross-government discussions outlined above and may not align with reality.

The totals do not align with totals published elsewhere in SALT and RAP due to summing totals by categories, not including prison settings and small number suppression.

In Referrals, Assessments and Packages (RAP) of care, clients who receive multiple community-based services simultaneously will be listed in each service type. Therefore, there will be some double counting of clients within the RAP period of our methodology that is not present in SALT. This will affect comparability between RAP and SALT and should be taken into account when using the time series. The double counting in RAP's community service categories, along with RAP and SALT being separate data collections, results in a data break in 2014/15 when SALT was introduced.