New Requests For Adult Social Care Support Actioned By Councils Approaches Two Million

Just under two million (1,846,000) requests for adult social care support for new clients were actioned by councils during 2014-15². This equates to an average of 5,000 new requests actioned per day³.

This figure comes from Community Care Statistics: Social Services Activity, England 2014-15, released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) today. This report is based on a newnational data collection⁴ from councils, which covers short and long term social care and provides new information on the primary reason people need support.

Of the 1,846,000 actioned requests for new clients:

• 72 per cent (1,327,000) related to adults aged 65 and over and 28 per cent (519,000) related to clients age 18-64.
• 31 per cent (575,000) resulted in the client being given a “universal service” or “signposted to other support” ⁵
• 28 per cent (520,000) had an outcome of “no services provided” ⁶
• 16 per cent (304,000) saw ongoing low level support provided⁷
• 12 per cent (218,000) had short term support provided to maximise independence⁸
• 8 per cent (144,000) had an outcome of long term support⁹

Looking at both new and existing clients who received support during the year:

Long term support

• A total of 890,000 adults received long term support from local authorities at some point in 2014-15.
• Of these, 74 per cent (659,000) were receiving this support at the year-end on 31 March 2015 and of those, nearly half a million (485,000 or 74 per cent) had received this support for more than a year.
• For long term social care users over the age of 65, the most common primary reason for support was personal care (64 per cent or 384,000 in this group ). For those aged 18 to 64 it was learning disability support (43 per cent or 124,000 in this group).

Short term support to maximise independence

• There were 254,000 completed instances¹⁰ of adults receiving this form of support during the year.
• In addition, 29,000 clients were receiving this form of support on 31 March 2015.
• For those receiving a completed instance of this form of support, the most common primary reason for support was personal care (70 per cent or 178,000).
• After receiving this form of support, 26 per cent (65,000) went on to receive long term support, of which 93 per cent (60,000) received long term support in the community.

Responsible statistician Chris Buttery said: “This report provides a new and rich picture of short term and long term social services provided for adults. This is now part of a range of information we produce¹¹ to enable the sharing of best practice, to understand the views of users and carers and to enable benchmarking between councils.

“These data give us more information about the national social care landscape than was available previously. Councils have worked hard to provide the new data, which will be of use for decision making both locally and nationally.”

Community Care Statistics: Social Services Activity, England 2014-15 can be found at: http://www.hscic.gov.uk/pubs/commcaressa1415

Also published by the HSCIC today is:

The Personal Social Services Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS) 2014-15¹². This survey of adults receiving long term support services funded or managed by councils examines issues such as quality of life, social contact and how satisfied users are with services. It can be found at: http://www.hscic.gov.uk/pubs/adusoccaresurv1415

Measures from the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF), England 2014-15¹³ provides measures to enable local councils’ adult social services to be benchmarked. It includes measures on the quality of life of social care users and their carers and a range of other indicators such as delayed discharge. It can be found at: http://www.hscic.gov.uk/pubs/aduscoccareof1415fin