Glossary

Unpaid carer: An unpaid carer (often shortened to ‘carer’ in this publication) is a person who provides care and support to family members, friends and neighbours, due to either old age, physical or mental illness, disability or an addiction, not as part of paid employment or voluntary work. An unpaid carer may care for more than one person.

Young carer: An unpaid carer who is either under 18 years old, or has reached age 18 and is still at school. 

Adult carer: An unpaid carer who is aged 18 years and over, unless they have reached age 18 and are still in school.

Cared-for person: The person who the unpaid carer is supporting.

Adult Carer Support Plan (ACSP): A written plan provided to adult carers which covers personal outcomes, identified support needs and the support to be provided to meet those needs.

Young Carer Statement (YCS): A written plan provided to young carers which covers personal outcomes, identified support needs and the support to be provided to meet those needs.

Short break or respite: This is where arrangements are put in place that allow the carer to have a break from their normal routine and their caring responsibilities.  This can be provided in many forms, and can be on a regular, planned basis or as a one-off. They can involve the carer, cared-for person or both together.

Main client group: The main reason the cared-for person requires help or support. This can include dementia, mental health, learning disability, physical disability, palliative care, addiction, frailty due to old age and others.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD): A relative measure of deprivation across Scotland, which is split across 6,976 small areas (called data zones). SIMD looks at the extent to which an area is deprived across seven domains: income, employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing. It is the Scottish Government's standard approach to identify areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland.

Decile: A decile refers to a series of ranked data being split into 10 equally sized subsections. When applied to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, this means that when the data for the 6,976 areas is split into 10 subsections the ‘most deprived decile’ would comprise the top 697 areas in levels of multiple deprivation.