Extension Of Free Personal Care To People Under The Age Of 65, Scotland, 2020-21

Expenditure on Free Personal Care

The information presented in this section is based on information from the Scottish Government Quarterly Monitoring Return.

While expenditure information on Free Personal Care (FPC) is collected in the Scottish Government Local Financial Returns, it was determined that because the information lines on FPC for 18 – 64 year olds are new and completion is variable, it would be more appropriate to use the data from the Quarterly Monitoring Return for this publication.

This means that the expenditure information presented here cannot be compared to the expenditure figures presented in the Free Personal and Nursing Care, Scotland, 2020-21 publication, as the figures concern different types of expenditure based on different sources. However, the expenditure data from the Quarterly Monitoring Return has the benefit of being more closely linked to the activity data i.e. the number of people receiving personal care at home.

Care Homes

In order to estimate the expenditure on FPC for self-funding care home residents aged 18-64, the amount spent through FPC payments for the last week of the quarter was estimated by multiplying the number of residents receiving payments by the payment amount for that year (as shown in Table 1). For 2019-20 and 2020‑21, the average of the four weeks for each year was then taken to obtain an average weekly spend. These were then scaled up to a full year.

Since the extension of Free Personal Care in April 2019, an estimated £2.2 million has been spent through FPC payments to self-funding residents aged 18 – 64.

An estimated £1.1 million was spent through FPC payments each year following the extension, compared to an estimated £0.8 million in 2018-19 prior to the formal extension of Free Personal Care.

Care at Home

As part of the Quarterly Monitoring Return, Local Authorities were asked to provide the estimated cost of providing personal care at home to people aged 18 – 64 for the last week of the financial quarter based on the average costs for their area. This was then scaled up to obtain the estimated expenditure for each quarter and full financial year.

Expenditure on personal care at home for 18 – 64 year olds was relatively high prior to the extension of Free Personal Care, as people under the age of 65 often receive care in their own homes rather than move to a care home. However, prior to the extension Local Authorities would have been able to charge for this. Since April 2019, Local Authorities cannot charge people for personal care at home who have been assessed as needing it.

Based on estimated expenditure for full financial years, the estimated expenditure on personal care at home in 2020-21 was £33.7 million (19%) higher than the estimated expenditure in 2018-19, prior to the extension of Free Personal Care.

The estimated expenditure on personal care at home for people aged 18 – 64 has seen increases each quarter since Q4 2019-20, despite fewer hours of personal care at home being delivered in 2020-21. This indicates that the average costs of providing care have increased over the last year.

Estimated expenditure on personal care at home (£) for each financial quarter, Scotland, Q4 2018-19 to Q4 2020-21

Source: Scottish Government Quarterly Monitoring Return

Note 1: Numbers do not include Fife, Scottish Borders or South Ayrshire as this information was unavailable.

Note 2: Numbers contain some estimation for missing values. See Data Quality section for further details.