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

Following a request for support and subsequent assessment, clients may be provided with a period of short term care.

Short term care falls into two categories:

Short Term Support to Maximise Independence (ST-Max) – This includes all episodes of support provided that are intended to be time limited, with the intention of maximising the independence of the individual and reducing/eliminating their need for ongoing support by the CASSRs.

Other Short Term Support – All other short term services, for example, emergency support not otherwise included in short term to maximise independence.

Please Note: There are differences in how information on short term care is collected between the ASC-FR and SALT returns.

For example, activity data includes those receiving short term care to maximise independence with a Primary Support Reason (PSR) of Social Support, whereas this PSR is not included in short term expenditure (instead being recorded elsewhere).

Therefore, care must be taken when comparing the two returns; some comparisons of general trends can be made, but more direct comparisons, such as a cost per episode of care, are not recommended.

Source: ASC-FR collection, 2023-24, NHS England - See Table 17 in Data Tables.

ST-Max is a time limited period of short term support intended to maximise the independence of clients and to reduce or prevent longer-term reliance on social care. In 2023-24 there were 281,850 completed episodes of ST-Max where the outcome was known within the reporting period. The majority of these (88.6%) were for physical support where an individual requires help because they find physical things difficult to do by themselves.

Note: one person may have multiple episodes of ST-Max within the year. As such, the 281,850 episodes of ST-Max related to 241,010 clients, which equates to an average of 1.1 completed episodes of ST-Max per client during the year.

ST-Max is not only offered to new clients. Many local authorities offer this to existing clients, who account for 10.7% (30,315) of the total completed episodes of ST-Max in the period. Given that existing clients already have long term needs, their outcomes are very different.

Source: SALT collection, 2023-24, NHS England - See Table 28 in Data Tables.

This section will discuss only the outcomes for new clients (those not already in receipt of long term care). Data on outcomes for existing clients can be found in Table 27 of the data tables accompanying this report.

A primary aim of ST-Max is to provide short term rehabilitative support allowing a client to avoid ongoing long term support needs.

More than a third (40.7%) of all completed episodes resulted in the client having no identified needs, therefore they had no further ongoing requirement for adult social care support.

As Figure 12 below shows, this was the most frequent outcome for both those aged 18-64 and aged 65 over. After this, for both age groups, the second most frequent outcome is long term support being offered.

Source: SALT collection, 2023-24, NHS England - See Table 21 in Data Tables.