Data and Methodology

Data Quality

Some organisations who submit data for the Carers Census will not have the information to complete all of the topics covered by the census. This is because some might only provide certain support services but not carry out support plans while others may be commissioned to carry out support plans but not to provide support services. As such, the analysis presented in this publication is largely based on records where the information is available.

Some organisations have been unable to return information on all the carers they support due to differences in data recording. For instance, some organisations are only able to provide information on carers with a support plan in place but will have also supported other carers whose information was not recorded in the same way. There were also some areas where a return was received from either social work or third sector but not from both, or from neither, leading to gaps in coverage across Scotland. As such, the figures reported here will be an undercount of the true number of carers being supported by local services.

The figures presented here will also not be reflective of the true number of Adult Carer Support Plans (ACSPs) and Young Carer Statements (YCSs) or the support which carers receive under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016. This is partly due to differences in data recording, but also due to differences in the way support plans are implemented. Some areas will only use an Adult Carer Support Plan or Young Carer Statement as an escalation if the carer’s situation worsens. Others will have conversations with the carer about their role and needs and put support in place, but will not record the data as an ACSP or YCS.

These issues should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results in this report.

All figures presented in this report are rounded and refer only to carers identified in the Carers Census rather than all unpaid carers living in Scotland. Therefore, statements such as ‘x% of carers were reported to have experienced impacts on their health’ refer only to carers reported on within the Carers Census rather than all unpaid carers.

The results in this report should not be directly compared to the 2018-19 publication, since the 2018-19 figures cover a 6 month period rather than a full year. It also important to note that comparisons between 2021-22 and 2022-23 will be based on the number or records available in each year, which may vary. For example, in 2021-22 there were 31,200 records with information available on support provided compared with 22,950 records in 2022-23.

The data for the table and charts are available in the supporting documents.

We will continue to review the Carers Census for future publications, working with organisations who submit data to make further improvements to the process and to make the final data more useful for users.

De-duplication process

As unpaid carers can sometimes be supported by more than one local service, it is possible for information on the same carer to be submitted by multiple organisations. To ensure that carers are not being double counted in the final results, the figures presented in this report refer only to records that have been de-duplicated. This means that only one record per unpaid carer is included in the final results.

First, instances where an organisation has returned more than one record for the same carer are examined. If information for the same carer is split over several records, these are combined into a single record that contains all the information for that carer.

Next, records where month and year of birth, gender or data zone were unknown or missing were removed. This is because all three of these identifiers are required in order to create an accurate enough de-duplication ID that can allow us to determine if records submitted by different organisations refer to the same person or not. Of the records submitted in 2022-23, around 11% were removed due to missing identifiers.

De-duplication IDs were then created for each remaining record by combining the three identifiers: month and year of birth, data zone and gender. All records where the de-duplication ID appeared only once were included in the final analysis. In cases where the de-duplication ID was the same for multiple records, further analysis was undertaken to determine if those records referred to different carers or were duplicate records.

If multiple records submitted by a single organisation had the same de-duplication ID, but different record IDs (e.g. Carer 1 and Carer 2), it was assumed that these records referred to different carers. In cases where the same system was used by multiple providers (e.g. different Carer Centres run by the same organisation) and so used the same record IDs, a single record was taken for each carer. If providers each returned different parts of the data, these were combined into a single record.

As a result of the de-duplication process outlined above, 79% of the records submitted in 2022-23 were included in the final data analysis – the same as in 2021-22.

Table 1: Number of records included in analysis following de-duplication

Source: Carers Census, Scotland, 2022-23.

Analysis of records removed during de-duplication process

The de-duplication process removed 12,120 records (21% of all records submitted) from the dataset in 2022-23. Further analysis was carried out on these records in order to ascertain if certain groups of carers were impacted more than others.

Some areas were more impacted than others by the de-duplication process. However, this was not necessarily due to data quality issues such as missing identifiers. Areas where organisations work together to provide unpaid carers with support will be more likely to return information on the same people, which would lead to more records being removed during the de-duplication process.

For example, if a carers centre led on conversations with the carer to put a support plan in place while the Local Authority provided the support needed then both organisations would return some information on the same carer. Therefore, to avoid double counting the information would be combined into a single record to be included in the final analysis and so one record would be removed from the total overall.

In 2022-23, 17% of records for 18 - 64 year olds and 23% of records for 65+ year olds were removed. This is higher than the 0 - 18 year old age group, for whom 7% of records were removed during the de-duplication process. This means that the de-duplication process affected adult carer records (particularly older adult carers) more than young carer records.

Similar proportions of records for male (15%) and female (18%) carers were removed in 2022-23. However, there was slightly more variation across ethnic groups with the proportion of records removed varying between 13% and 16% for each ethnic group (not including records where ethnic group was missing or not known).

The proportion of records removed for each deprivation decile (as measured using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)) varied between 15% and 27%, with higher proportions of records being removed for the less deprived SIMD deciles. In 2022-23, 27% of records in the least deprived SIMD decile were removed compared to 15% in the most deprived SIMD decile. This means that unpaid carers from less deprived areas were less likely to be included in the final results.