National Care Service: Factsheet

Why we need an NCS

People with experience of accessing or delivering community health, social work and social care support have told us the system must change. We have heard that we must tackle the unwarranted variation of care across the country and drive up quality.

The creation of the NCS offers opportunities to focus on the population’s health and wellbeing. The goal is to have a positive impact on life expectancy and on quality of life.

To achieve this, our health, social work and social care systems must work together. They must support everyone to live as independently as possible, whatever their needs and wherever they live.

Current challenges

The data shows us that the relationships between health and social care issues are often very complex. Many people need to access and transition between services from across the health and social care spectrum. This can often include several services at the same time.

This highlights the need for people to be able to access services when and where they need them.

Demographics

The latest data on people receiving social care and social work support tells us that in 2021 to 2022:

• around 238,000 people received social care support in Scotland – 4% of the population
• around 58,000 (26% of records submitted) were under the age of 65
• around 75,000 people receiving social care or social work support had a physical or sensory disability
• around 22,000 had a learning disability
• around 16,000 people were receiving social care support due to mental health issues
• people can be receiving support for several reasons – for example, substance misuse, neurological conditions, dementia, palliative care or other reasons

Care at home and residential care

The latest data on people receiving care at home shows that 89,620 people in Scotland received care at home in 2022 to 2023.

Based on the latest care home census, 34,365 people (aged 18+) were residing in a care home. People residing in a care home tend to be older, with around 90% of residents aged 65+ and nearly 50% aged 85+.

Unpaid care

There are around 839,000 people (19%) aged 18 and over providing unpaid care support across Scotland. This figure comes from the 2020 Scottish Health Survey telephone survey results. The 2022 update to the Scotland’s Carers report also estimated there are around 30,000 unpaid young carers aged 4 to 17 in the country.