National Care Service - social care and caring experiences: evidence

1. Introduction

This paper provides an overview of recent evidence on experiences of social care and unpaid caring in Scotland, with a focus on data from the 2021/22 Health and Care Experience Survey (HACE)^[1].

It forms one of an initial collection of contextual evidence papers, setting out key sources of information about social care and related areas in Scotland, linking to the National Care Service Consultation proposals published in August 2021.

The collection consists of the following 6 papers on social care:

1. Scotland’s Health and Demographic Profile

2. People who Access Social Care and Unpaid Carers in Scotland

3. Social Care Support and Service Provision in Scotland

4. Experiences of Social Care and Caring in Scotland

5. The Adult Social Care Workforce in Scotland

6. Adult Social Care in Scotland - Equality Evidence Overview

And papers on:

7. Children’s Social Services

8. Justice Social Work in Scotland

9. Learning and evidence from national social care systems in Nordic and Scandinavian countries

10. Integrated Care Studies: The SCFNuka (Alaska) and Canterbury (New Zealand) Models

While the focus of this set of evidence papers is social care, there is an intrinsic link between social care and social work. Social work is a statutory role which involves assessing need, managing risk, and promoting and protecting the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Social care support is an umbrella term for adult, children’s and justice services which directly support people to meet their personal outcomes. A social work evidence paper is being prepared for publication in summer 2022.

HACE is a biennial questionnaire that asks a nationally representative sample of the population about their experiences with their GP practice; out of hours healthcare; care, support and help with everyday living; and caring responsibilities^[2].

The 2021-22 iteration of the survey ran between November and December 2021, and received 130,352 responses. Full information about the survey design and methodology can be found in the Technical Report^[3]. This report follows many of the same reporting approaches, for example all changes over time and comparisons between groups that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the five per cent level, and rounding is applied to the data, generally to report integers or results to one decimal place.

This paper analyses the survey returns focusing specifically on the experiences of people receiving care and support and those providing unpaid care. Respondents could be both receiving care and support and providing unpaid care. Comparisons to pre Covid-19 survey results (from 2019-20) are also provided where available and applicable. The information presented here is intended to provide insights into experiences of social care and unpaid caring in Scotland.