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4. Notes on tables
General Issues
4.1 This is the third year of the data collection and although the quality of the data is improving, some local authorities still have difficulty in providing all of the information requested. Where this occurs, estimates have been made and these have been described in the footnotes and in these notes below.
4.2 The Scottish Executive requests information on the numbers of clients supported during the year. However, the information management systems in some local authorities are designed to produce statistics on the number of services provided, and client-based information cannot be extracted. This can result in double counting of clients who receive more than one service, who receive more than one period of support, or whose support needs change during the course of the year. Some local authorities have been unable to remove this double counting and where necessary, totals for services have been adjusted proportionally to equal the net number of clients.
4.3 The inclusion of clients receiving community alarms causes problems for a number of local authorities, and results in inconsistency of data recording between authorities and between years. The way that the information is held means that sometimes it is not possible for the authority to determine whether these clients receive other support services in addition to receiving a community alarm. Some authorities double count these clients, while others remove alarm users from their return.
4.4 The information provided by some local authorities is not yet consistent over time, which means that apparent changes between years should be interpreted with caution. In 2005-06 there was a reported overall drop in client numbers of 4%, with some large changes in individual local authorities. For example, Argyll & Bute record an apparent 73% increase in client numbers, and Renfrewshire record a drop of 64%. However, such changes can be at least partially explained by a number of factors:
- changes in the way that services are provided (e.g. Argyll & Bute and Renfrewshire),
- changes in local authorities' information systems (e.g. Glasgow), and
- improvements to data collection methods as authorities become more familiar with the information required (e.g. Edinburgh and North Ayrshire)
More information about issues specific to individual local authorities is shown in the following section.
Local Authority Information
4. 5 The data presented in these tables refer to financial years 2004-05 and 2005-06 with the exception of Renfrewshire who were only able to provide snapshot figures at 31 March each year.
4.6 Particular care should be taken when comparing the two years data for the following local authorities:
- Argyll & Bute report that due to changes in contracts, support provided to the homeless client group is included in the client numbers in 2005-06, whereas in 2004-05 these people were not included in the client statistics return.
- Edinburgh council recorded the number of services provided in 2004-05, rather than the number of clients supported, resulting in double counts of people who received more than one service. In 2005-06 Edinburgh were able to report on the number of clients, and the elimination of these double counts may have contributed to the apparent decrease in client numbers.
- Glasgow City council produced an incomplete snapshot of data as at 31 March 2005 for 2004-05 but were able to provide full financial year data for 2005-06. The two years data cannot be directly compared.
- North Ayrshire made an estimate of the number of clients using an outreach service in 2004-05, consisting of a helpline service that does not record client details for confidentiality reasons. These figures were excluded in 2005-06, as it was deemed likely that their inclusion would result in double counting.
- Renfrewshire council have excluded community alarms and two other housing support services from their 2005-06 data. These had been included in 2004-05, but were considered to be artificially inflating the client numbers and so were removed from the 2005-06 collection.
4.7 Perth & Kinross were unable to provide full information for a council housing department homelessness service. It delivered 1 to 4 hrs per week of support for up to a month to people moving into their own mainstream homes. They estimated that the service supported 150 people. Argyll & Bute provided a web-based information service for 800 clients, but client characteristics are unknown. In both cases, the figures have been excluded from the body of the tables, and from the Scotland totals.
4.8 Fife and Dundee City councils were unable to provide data for 2005-06. In all tables, 2004-05 data for Fife and Dundee were used to estimate 2005-06 Scotland level totals, but the local authority rows have been marked as 'not available'. Both councils report that there have been no significant changes between 2004-05 and 2005-06.
4.9 West Lothian council were unable to provide a breakdown of support hours or support duration in either 2004-05 or 2005-06. Support hours and duration were estimated using Scotland-level proportions.
4.10 The following symbols are used in all tables:
- nil
* less than half the final digit shown (less than: 0.5%, 50 for figures rounded to the nearest hundred, or 5 for figures rounded to the nearest 10)
.. not available
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