Free Personal and Nursing Care: Methodology and background information, 2023-24

Care at Home: includes a variety of assistance intended to help people who have been assessed for support to function as independently as possible, and/or to continue to live in their own homes (including in sheltered housing or equivalent accommodation). Care at Home can include personal care, and/or support with a range of routine tasks within or outside the home (such as basic housework, shopping, laundry or paying bills).

Free Nursing Care (FNC): Nursing care is provided for free in Scotland to people assessed as requiring it, making it free at the point of use. The FPNC publication reports on people receiving FNC in care homes. Nursing care for people at home is provided by the NHS, and is not counted in these statistics.

Free Nursing Care payment: A set, weekly payment available to self-funding care home residents towards their nursing care needs. The value of the payment has increased over time (as shown in figure 1 in Appendix 1) and was £104.90 in 2023-24.

Free Personal Care (FPC): Free care of a personal nature is provided for people residing in a care home, or receiving Care at Home, who are assessed as needing it. Personal care has been provided for free to people aged 65 and over since 2002. This was extended in April 2019 to all adults, under Frank’s Law.

For people receiving personal care at home, the term “FPC at home” has been used within this publication when referring to 2019-20 and later.

Free Personal Care payment: A set, weekly payment available to self-funding care home residents towards their personal care needs. The value of the payment has increased over time (as shown in figure 1 in Appendix 1) and was £233.10 in 2023-24.

Free Personal and Nursing Care (FPNC): Encompasses both FPC and FNC. Some care home residents receive both FPC and FNC, and others receive only FPC. Although a few care home residents receive FNC without FPC, these numbers are taken to be very small, so they are not collected for this publication.

In this publication, the numbers of care home residents receiving FPNC, and the estimated local authority expenditure on FPNC for care home residents, only refer to self-funding care home residents. They do not include residents whose care home place is partially or fully funded by the local authority under the National Care Home Contract.

(Long-stay) care home resident with local authority support: as defined in the Quarterly Monitoring Return, this includes:

• all residents in local authority-funded and private/voluntary care homes that the local authority is paying a contribution for (irrelevant of funding level)
• all residents in care homes registered with the Care Inspectorate
• all self-funders who are in receipt of Free Personal Care and/or Free Nursing Care payments

on the last day of the quarter.

National Care Home Contract: The National Care Home Conctract (NCHC) rate is agreed annually between COSLA and care providers, represented by Scottish Care. The Scottish Government is not a contractual party to this agreement. People placed under the National Care Home Contract (NCHC) are still entitled to FPNC if they require it, but are financially assessed for their contribution towards care. Care home residents under the NCHC are not included in the statistics in the Free Personal and Nursing Care publication. This is because it is not currently possible to separate out FPNC payments from the total the local authority pays to the care home for those residents.

Nursing care: consists of specific tasks related to someone’s physical person, that are explicitly medical in nature. For example, the changing of dressings, administering injections, or managing pressure sores.

Personal care: involves care of a personal nature. It can include activities such as help with eating, bathing and toileting. It can also include tasks such as assistance with reminders and managing behaviour. A fuller list of the types of care counted as personal care can be found on the Care Information Scotland website.

Personal care at home: since July 2002 for people aged 65 and over, and since April 2019 for people aged 18 to 64, individuals can no longer be charged for personal care services provided in their own home. I.e. personal care at home is provided for free. For this reason, for people receiving personal care at home, the term “FPC at home” (for Free Personal Care at home) has been used within this publication when referring to 2019-20 and later.

Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4: see Quarter

Quarter: A three month period of the year. Quarter 1 (Q1) lasts from April to June, Q2 from July to September, Q3 from October to December and Q4 from January to March.

Self Directed Support (SDS): People receiving Care at Home have choice around how they receive their social care. This gives them control over what they receive and how it is paid for. This is known as ‘self-directed support’. There are four options for self-directed support. There is more information about these four options on the Scottish Government’s webpage about the extension of FPC to adults under the age of 65.

Self-funding care home resident, or ‘self-funder’: a resident with assets, including property, that have been assessed as being worth more than a threshold amount, and who therefore pays the total of their care home fees. In 2023-24 the upper capital threshold limit was £32,750. These residents will be eligible for Free Personal Care and Free Nursing Care payments, if they are assessed by their local authority as needing them. However, they may still need to contribute towards their remaining accommodation and living costs, depending on the outcome of their financial assessment

Year: The FPNC publication uses years that cover the period from 1 April – 31 March. This publication relates to data from the 2023-24 year (i.e. the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024).