NON-RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY CARE, SCOTLAND 1998
STATISTICAL INFORMATION NOTE

The purpose of this Information Note is to present national figures for day and home care services for adults in Scotland in 1998. It also presents summary figures for lunch clubs and meals-on-wheels. All the information is derived from returns made to The Scottish Office by Scottish local authorities and individual day care establishments.

Information on non-residential community care in Scotland was published in respect of 1997 in the Statistical Bulletin ‘Community Care Scotland, 1997’. This was the last in a series of bulletins covering the broad field of community care services for adults.

New methodologies for dealing with non response were introduced in 1998, therefore care should be taken when making comparisons with pre-1998 data.

• · In 1998 there were 585 day care facilities in Scotland, 543 of which were in use with over 4 places each, providing a total of 19,987 places in the week ending 29 March 1998

• · Approximately 75 percent of day care centres were local authority run

• · Around 64 percent of local authority day centre clients received 3 days service or less per week compared to 56 percent of private or voluntary centre clients

• · An estimated 62 percent of staff in day centres for people with learning disabilities were care staff compared to 55 percent in centres primarily for older people

• · There were an estimated 79,519 clients who received a home care service provided by or purchased by a local authority in the week containing 31 March 1998

• · 85 percent of these clients were aged 65 years or over

• · 11 percent of clients of local authority provided or purchased home care received more than 10 hours service per week, and 35 percent received services at the weekend

• · A total of 734 lunch clubs serving a total of 1,386,000 meals were reported in the year to 31 March 1998

• · An estimated 24 persons per 1000 aged over 65 were reported to have received a meal through the meals-on wheels service

In 1998, there were 585 day care facilities in Scotland. The figures presented in this Information Note relate to the 543 centres which were reported to be in use, and to contain more than 4 places – those with 4 or less places are usually attached to residential homes. Estimates were made for non-responding centres based on their location and sector (i.e. local authority owned or private/voluntary). All figures for day centres relate to the week ending 29 March 1998

Day care centres are classified according to the main client group attending. Table 1 shows that there were slightly more places in centres for people with learning disabilities than in centres for older people (around 8,700 and 8,400 places, respectively). Centres for older people, however, had significantly more clients attending in 1998 (around 11,800 compared to 8,400 clients).

Local authority centres accounted for around 75 percent of all centres and 81 percent of all clients. The average number of attendees in local authority owned centres was 45 clients per centre compared to 33 in private and voluntary centres (see Table 1).

Charts 1 and 2 compare the attendance patterns in local authority run centres and in private and voluntary centres. Approximately 64 percent of clients attending local authority run centres attended for between 1 and 3 days per week. This compares to an equivalent figure of 56 percent for private and voluntary centres.

Chart 1

Chart 2

Table 2

Table 2 presents details of whole-time equivalent (WTE) staff working in centres by client group and sector based on those centres which were able to provide the relevant information (421 centres). It shows that there were approximately 17 WTE care staff per 100 clients attending day centres for people with learning disabilities compared to 6 WTE staff per 100 clients in centres for older people. In private/voluntary centres there were 9 WTE care staff per 100 clients compared to an equivalent figure of 12 WTE care staff in local authority centres.

A revised home care statistical collection was introduced in respect of the week containing 31 March 1998. Local authorities were asked to provide details of all home care services provided by their own staff, and in addition, services bought in from other local authorities, private and voluntary organisations.

As this was the first year of the revised collection, for many local authorities all relevant details were not available. Imputations have therefore been made in order to generate an estimate of the national picture. This Information Note presents the initial results for the new 1998 collection. There is external evidence that the amount of home care services provided without local authority involvement has grown significantly in recent years. Statistical information on such activity in Scotland is not currently available, and therefore is not included in this analysis.

Table 3 shows that there were an estimated 79,519 clients who received a home care service from or funded by a local authority in the week containing 31 March 1998. Of these, 5,320 received at least part of their home care service from a private or voluntary provider. The average number of contact hours per client for those receiving local authority provided services was 4.8 hrs compared to 8.4 hrs for those receiving at least part of their home care service from a private or voluntary provider.

Of clients receiving local authority provided or purchased home care services, 64 percent were people with physical disabilities (including frailty due to old age), and 85 percent were aged 65 or over. (Table 4). Twenty-five percent of home care clients were classified as being in ‘other vulnerable groups’. It is expected that this group will include a significant number of people who would have been classified as ‘older people’ under the old classification system.

Local authorities had difficulty in identifying whether home care services were provided for respite. Based on the limited response to this question, 4 percent of clients were estimated to be receiving respite home care.

For local authority staff providing home care services, the average number of client contact hours per whole-time equivalent staff was estimated to be 31 hrs.

Equivalent information on staff contact within the private and voluntary organisations providing services to local authority funded clients is not available.

Eleven percent of home care clients received more than 10 hrs of service provided or purchased by a local authority in the week containing 31 March 1998. (Table 5)

Chart 3 illustrates the relative number of clients receiving home care services by time of day, and by weekday / weekend. Thirty-five percent of clients received home care at the weekends, 5 percent receive services in the evening, and 1 percent received services overnight. This information was not readily available in all authorities, so estimates have been made on the basis of those who responded. It should be noted that one client may receive services at a range of times and on different days, so there will be double counting in these figures.

Local authorities were also asked to estimate how many clients were receiving domestic home care services and how many were receiving personal care at home. As explained above, it is possible for one client to receive a range of home care services, so there will be double counting. From the returned information, it is estimated that more than twice as many clients received home care for domestic services compared to those receiving personal services.

Local authorities were asked to supply information on the number of lunch clubs and meals-on-wheels services within their area of responsibility. Details of lunch club activity appear to be incomplete in many authorities, and it is not possible to make estimates for

missing clubs. Where an authority was unable to make a return at all, figures from the most recent year were used to generate an estimate of the national total. Figures presented here are therefore numbers of lunch clubs and meals-on-wheels reported only.

The total number of lunch clubs reported as at 31 March 1998 was 734, of which 276 were local authority run. The reported clubs served a total of 1,386,000 meals in the year to 31 March 1998. This represented an average of 1,900 per club.

An estimated 19,000 people received a meals-on-wheels service in the year to 31 March 1998. Around 30 percent of those reported received meals more than 3 days per week. The total number of meals served in the year was estimated to be 2,500,000.

Further Information

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Information Note are available on request from the address given below. The Information Note is available on the Internet.

Information at a disaggregated local authority level showing estimated trends and voluntary sector/private sector splits will be available on request, and is planned for future publication on the Internet.