Social care - personal assistants: current data sources and future work

Required information that is not currently available

To provide information on the average number of PAs people employ, the Scottish Government is working with SDSS to produce a survey of PA payroll providers, which are organisations used by PA employers to manage the wages of the PAs they employ. The 2010 Research Report produced by SDSS estimated an average number of 2.4 PAs per employer in Scotland.

Work is also underway with the SDS Practice Network, to explore a voluntary collection of data including the direct payment recipients in Scotland along with the proportion of those recipients who employ PAs. SDS Practice Network is set up by Social Work Scotland who are the professional leadership body for the social work and social care professionals in Scotland, this practice network ensures implementation of Self-directed Support (SDS) across all client groups. While it is unlikely that all areas would be able to provide this information, it may be possible to obtain a proxy figure based on those areas who are able to return information.

With these additional sources of information, we would be able to replicate the Skills for Care approach and estimate the number of PAs currently working in Scotland. However, this estimate will also be dependent on the data quality of the sources used. The benefits and limitations of the existing sources which would be used are discussed in the following sections.