Insights in social care: statistics for Scotland
Support provided or funded by health and social care partnerships in Scotland 2021/22

About this release

Revised 7 November 2023.

This impacts:

• Care at home figures for City of Edinburgh, Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar and Scotland
• Technology enabled care figures for Renfrewshire and Scotland.

Please see the technical document for further details.

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides information on people receiving social care support and services in Scotland for financial year 2021/22. 

The statistics in the publication cover a range of social care themes including people's choices under self-directed support, and the support delivered at home or in a care home.  It also reports emergency healthcare for some of these clients.

Main points

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• An estimated 1 in 25 people in Scotland were reported as receiving social care support and services at some point during 2021/22.
• In 2021/22 the rate per 1,000 population of people receiving social care support through any self-directed supported option increased from 18.4 (2020/21) to 18.9 people per 1,000 population.
• An estimated 65,500 people in Scotland received care at home for the quarter ending 31 March 2022 (a decrease of around 4% from the same time period in 2020/21). This is equivalent to 12 people per 1,000 population.
• Some 33,000 people received funding towards a long stay care home place in Scotland during 2021/22, this is a decrease of around 1% from 2020/21. In addition, a further 3,645 people were supported during a short stay in a care home, such as for respite or for reablement during this time. This is an increase of around 67% from 2020/21.
• In 2021/22, an estimated 129,000 people had an active community alarm and/or a telecare service. This is a 1% decrease in provision from the previous year.

Effects of COVID-19

The measures put in place to respond to COVID-19 pandemic will have affected the services that the Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) were able to provide over the period of the pandemic.  Differences in data from previous years are likely to be affected by the ability of HSCPs to provide social care services while dealing with the impact of the pandemic.

Background

PHS assumed responsibility for the collection and analysis of certain national social care data in 2018 and extended the data collection. The social care information are provided by HSCPs in Scotland for people that are fully or partially funded by the Local Authority. Note people entirely self-funding their care are not included. Not all partnerships were able to provide information for every social care service/support and estimates are included. Further information on data completeness and estimation are provided in the dashboards.

In order to develop these statistics, and due to the changes in the collection and processing, the figures in this release are classified as ‘Experimental Statistics’. Further information on the data collection is available on the PHS website.