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5. Background information on the collection of the data

These statistics have not been published as National Statistics as some of the data are still under development and there remain quality issues with collecting data on personal care services at home. In particular, weekly hours of personal care at home is highlighted as data under development.

A variety of different data sources were used to compile this Statistics Release, as detailed below:

Community Care Monthly key monitoring return

Between 2002 and 2005 the Scottish Executive collected monthly information from Local Authorities regarding the number of residents supported in Care Homes. This data is summarised in Annex 1: Table 1. From 2006, this information was collected quarterly in the community care quarterly key monitoring return.

Community Care Quarterly key monitoring return

Since July 2002, the Scottish Executive has collected quarterly information on the number of people receiving personal care services at home and the number of self-funders receiving free personal care and free nursing care payments. The numbers represent only those people receiving FPC and FNC under the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002.

For Care Homes, this provides a count of those people who, prior to free personal care, were self-funders. Anyone who is funded under the National Assistance regulations even if they are topped up to £145 for free personal care are excluded from the figures.

For care at home the figures show all people receiving personal care services at home. A proportion of these would have received their personal care for free prior to the introduction of the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002.

Local Authorities have improved their recording and reporting of this data over time as systems have been set up to monitor and record this information.

The results of the quarterly survey are available at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/Data/QuarterlySurvey

Free Personal and nursing care expenditure survey

The Scottish Executive carried out a separate survey asking about expenditure on free personal and nursing care for 2002-03 and 2003-04. From 2004-05 onwards this data is collected through the Local Financial Return ( LFR3).

For Care Homes, the numbers represent spend on those people receiving FPC and FNC under the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002. i.e. those prior to free personal care who were self-funders. Expenditure figures also include the amount spent on anyone who was topped up to the £145/£210 per week.

For care at home, the numbers represent all spend on personal care services provided to people in their own homes.

Local Financial Return ( LFR3)

The Local Financial Return collects expenditure statistics for each local authority in Scotland. The LFR3 collects all expenditure and income relating to social work services. From 2004-05, questions relating to expenditure on free personal care were added to the LFR3 return. Further information available from: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance

Points to note

The quality of the data on Free Personal Care continues to improve. However there remain issues with this data which still preclude it from being labelled as a National Statistics publication.

All figures published on Free Personal and nursing care are provisional and subject to possible change in future publications. Some particular issues that we are aware of:

Many local authorities could not provide accurate data for some time after July 2002 as they were getting monitoring systems set up and put in place. The accuracy of the quarterly monitoring returns has improved over time and care should be taken in drawing any conclusions from the very early data as some estimation was involved in producing these figures,

Copies of all Community Care Surveys are available from the website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/DataSupplier

Care Homes

In general, care should be taken when comparing the data on 'numbers' of people receiving free personal care and 'expenditure' on free personal care. The number of people receiving FPC and FNC payments is collected at the end of the quarter and represents the number of people receiving payments on the last day of the quarter. These four quarters are averaged to produce the yearly total.

Due to the large number of admissions and discharges throughout the year, these averages do not necessarily represent the number of people receiving FPC for the full 52 weeks of the year. In the six months to March 2006, there were 6,500 long-stay admissions to care homes for older people in Scotland. This represents 250 long-stay and 340 short-stay admissions every week. It should be noted that these figures only provide a snapshot of people receiving payments at the end of the quarter rather than a precise count of throughput.

Edinburgh have revised their FPNC expenditure for all years to bring in line with the latest LFR3 guidance and the CIPFA Best Value Accounting Code of Practice ( BVACOP). This means that all Edinburgh FPNC expenditure figures include a share of overheads.

Care at Home

As with the care homes data, the quarterly data for FPC at home provides a snapshot at the end of each quarter which have been averaged to provide an annual figure. This will not compare directly with the expenditure data which takes into account fluctuations within each quarter.

The hourly data on free personal care at home (table 7) should be regarded as data under development and is not comparable with expenditure data or other data sources.

Edinburgh have revised their FPC at home figures for all years from 2003-04 onwards. They are now on the BVACOP "Total cost" basis as required by the LFR3.

West Lothian have revised their FPC at home figures for all years.

Further information

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Statistics Release are available on request from the address given below. The Statistics Release is available on the Internet by accessing the Scottish Executive web site: - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/Publications

Information at local authority level is shown in the annex to this Statistics Release.

Community Care Statistics

Contact: Steven Gillespie
Tel: 0131 244 3777
E-mail: SWStat@scotland.gov.uk

This statistics release was published on 26th June 2007.

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