Expenditure on Adult Social Care Services, Scotland, 2003-04 to 2013-14

1. Introduction

This Statistics Release presents detailed analysis of expenditure on adult Social Care services in Scotland over the financial years 2003-04 to 2013-14.

The purpose of the Release is to provide baseline analysis of expenditure on Social Care services over the decade prior to Health & Social Care Integration in Scotland. Over this period local authorities have provided, or purchased, the vast majority of Social Care services. Consequently, the expenditure figures presented are sourced from the Local Government Finance Return for Social Work (LFR03). Further information on the LFR03 is provided in Section 9.1. Users without specialist knowledge of Local Government accountancy terminology are advised to consult the definitions provided in Section 9.2 before interpreting the data in this Release.

The LFR03 provides detailed breakdowns, by service-type, of Gross Expenditure by local authorities, Net Revenue Expenditure by local authorities and income to local authorities from charges to service users. This Release focuses on Gross Expenditure by local authorities, as this relates most directly to the total cost of providing Social Care services, regardless of whether the funds are sourced from General Revenue Funding to local authorities, local taxation, transfers from the NHS, client contributions, or other sources. More limited analysis of the breakdown of Gross Expenditure by source of funding is provided in Section 3 of this report.

The LFR03 data has known limitations in terms of comparability between regions and consistency through time. The analysis presented in this report is at a sufficiently high level so as to be as robust as possible to these limitations. The data spreadsheet that accompanies the report allows users to analyse the LFR03 data down to the lowest possible level of detail (expenditure on a specific service-type for a specific client group in a given local authority). The data spreadsheet also contains tools for; i) making comparisons of Gross Expenditure between regions and client groups, ii) breaking down Gross Expenditure by service-type, service-grouping and client group, and iii) breaking down Gross Expenditure into Net Revenue Expenditure by local authorities and income to local authorities. The charts and tables in the data spreadsheet have been designed so as to highlight the known limitations in data consistency through time. Nonetheless, users with an interest in detailed analysis of the LFR03 data are advised to interpret such results in the context of the data quality limitations outlined in Section 9.3.

High-level expenditure figures from the LFR03 are published annually as part of the Local Government Finance Statistics compendium. However, no comprehensive publication of the detailed, service-level, expenditure figures has occurred since 2002. Over the intervening period, the full detail of the LFR03 data has remained available upon request and has been used on that basis in a range of applications. The present Official Statistics publication of detailed analysis of the LFR03 data will provide an authoritative and easily accessible route to this information. Further information on other sources of published information on Social Care expenditure is provided in Section 9.4.

All total expenditure values in this report are given to the nearest £ million. All per-capita expenditure values are given to the nearest £ 10 per-capita. All percentage values are given to the nearest percentage point. More accurate values (to the nearest £ thousand, £ per-capita and first decimal place of a percentage point respectively) are available in the data spreadsheet.