New statistical reports relating to adult social care published today

The latest statistics on adult social care — covering outcomes, activity, finance and the opinions of those receiving care — have been published by NHS Digital today.

The new reports relate to England and most contain figures covering 2019-20. An additional one-off mid-year publication covers April to September 2020 and includes selected statistics on adult social care.

Personal Social Services Adult Social Care Survey, England 2019-20
This annual survey1, conducted by councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs) provides estimates for all service users based on a survey sample. In 2019-20, responses from a sample of 62,520 people were used to provide estimates for an overall population of 608,1452 service users.

The survey found that 64.2%3 (389,130) of service users were very or extremely satisfied with the care and support they received. This is a very similar proportion to last year (64.3%)4.

The percentage of service users who were very or extremely dissatisfied with the care and support they received also remained stable at 2.1% (12,430) compared with 2.0% in 2018-194.

There was a significant increase in the percentage of service users that reported having no pain ‒ 37.2% (225,650) reported they had no pain or discomfort on the day that they completed the survey, compared to 36.6% in 2018-19.

The percentage of service users aged over 85 has decreased over each of the last 5 years. The percentage decreased from 27.3% in 2018-19 to 26.8% (162,230) in 2019-20.

The proportion of service users that have practical help on a regular basis from either a partner, family member, friend or neighbour increased from 40.8% in 2018-19 to 42.3% (256,220) in 2019-20.

This year’s survey found that 45.9% (278,280) of service users reported they had as much social contact as they wanted with people they like, while 6.3% (38,320) reported they had little social contact and felt socially isolated. Last year 45.9% had as much social contact as they liked and 5.9% felt socially isolated5.

Measures from the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework 2019-20
This publication draws on a number of data collections6 and measures how well care and support services achieve the outcomes that matter most to people.

Several measures showed a significant change since the previous year, including delayed transfers of care7 from hospital which were attributed to adult social care8. These increased from 10.3 per 100,000 population9 in 2018-19 to 10.8 per 100,000 population in 2019-20.

The proportion of young adults whose long-term support needs were met by admission to residential and nursing care homes increased from 13.9 per 100,000 population the previous year to 14.6 per 100,000 population in 2019-20.

The publication includes statistics on the proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services who are also in paid employment. Nationally, this is 9.0% in paid employment, with the Eastern region having the highest proportion (17.0%) and the North West region having the lowest proportion (5.0%).

Adult Social Care Activity and Finance report 2019-2010
In 2019-20, local authorities received 1.9 million requests11 from 1.4 million new clients, which is equivalent to 5,290 requests for support received per day by local authorities.

Local authority spending was £19.7 billion in 2019-20. This represents an increase of £918 million from the previous year, a 4.9% increase in cash terms and a 2.4% increase in real terms.

The area of care which saw the largest increase in expenditure was long term support, which increased by £748 million to £15.4 billion in 2019-20, an increase in cash terms of 5.1%.

Overall, the number of clients receiving long term care has decreased each year since 2015-16, to 838,530 in 2019-20. This has been mainly driven by a decrease in clients aged 65 and over receiving long term care, down 39,045 to 548,450 since 2015-16.

The average cost of residential care for a person aged 65 and over rose from £636 per week in 2018-19 to £662 per week in 2019-20, while the average cost of nursing care for the same age band increased from £678 per week in 2018-19 to £715 per week in 2019-20.

Mid-Year Adult Social Care Activity Data Collection
This is a one-off Management Information12 publication including selected statistics from various adult social care publications for the first two quarters of 2020-21. This is to help give an early view of how adult social care has been affected by coronavirus (COVID-19). However, submitting data for this report was not mandatory, so it will not provide a full picture of the situation across all local authorities.