Scottish Care Homes Census

The purpose of this guidance is to provide information on how to complete the Scottish Care Homes Census (SCHC).

It is recommended you have this guidance at hand when completing the census as it contains instructions on how to access the form for the census, how to complete parts 1 and 2 of the form and includes some further information.

The SCHC has been running in its current form since March 2003. It provides the Scottish Government, Local Authorities, the private and voluntary sector with information on all registered care homes in Scotland, allowing them to monitor and plan services for the future. The results are published annually by Public Health Scotland (PHS) as a statistical release. Further information is available on the PHS website or by emailing phs.carehomecensus@phs.scot.

There are three organisations responsible for the census:

• Scottish Government
• Care Inspectorate
• Public Health Scotland

The data is collected on behalf of the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government issue the initial request to care homes asking them to participate in the census.

The data from the census is submitted to the Care Inspectorate via their eForms system. This is the same system that care homes use to submit information on the Annual Return. Care Inspectorate staff are not able to see the information supplied. The system is only used to collect the information on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Public Health Scotland is responsible for checking, analysing and publishing the information collected as part of the census.

All three organisations work closely together to ensure the data is collected as efficiently as possible.