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Respite Care, Scotland, 2008-09
15/12/2009
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published Respite Care, Scotland 2008-09. This statistics release presents provisional, information on the number of Respite weeks provided in Scotland in 2008-09. Please note that all figures in this release are provisional, and will be subject to further validation before publication of final figures, scheduled for February 2010.
Some of the notable statistics included in the report are:
- The total number of respite weeks provided in Scotland has increased each year. In 2006-07, 164,000 respite weeks were provided, rising by 6 per cent to 174,000 in 2007-08 , and by 11 per cent to 193,000 in 2008-09. However, initial investigation of these figures reveals that some of this increase is due to better reporting of respite care by councils rather than new services being provided. Further validation of these figures is being carried out to improve the consistency of the information over time.
- The number of overnight respite weeks provided has fallen slightly from 64,000 in 2006-07 to 63,000 in 2008-09, while daytime respite weeks have increased substantially from 100,000 in 2006-07 to 130,000 in 2008-09. Note that not all of the increase in daytime respite is due to new service provision: some is improved reporting of these figures and this will be explored in more detail before publication of final figures, scheduled for February 2010.
This is the first publication of respite care as official statistics. Previously this information was collected by Audit Scotland as part of their Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs).