Social care - Personal Assistants: current data sources and future work

Data Source – Excel Report, Scotland Excel

This dataset relates to the £500 Thank You Payments issued to PA working in the social care sector by the Scottish Government in June-July of 2021. The payment applications were managed externally by Scotland Excel (SXL) and the original dataset has now been destroyed in compliance with data protection commitments, however high level aggregate data has been stored here.

Background to data collection

The £500 Thank You Payments were announced in November 2020, as part of a package of measures to provide bonuses for workers across the health and social care sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Payments were issued to those who applied via the dedicated online portal and met the eligibility criteria. In order to be eligible, PAs must have been employed for a minimum of one continuous 4-week period between 17 March 2020 and 30 November 2020, and have been employed by a PA employer who was a) over 16 and b) funded their support via either ILFS, or from a Local Authority or Health and Social Care Partnership through Option 1 Social Care (Self Directed Support). Details of how this eligibility criteria may have shaped the dataset are contained below in the “benefits and limitations” section.

The application portal opened in June 2021, and was initially to be open for applications for a period of 8 weeks. Additionally, a telephone helpline was made available between 09:30-16:30 Monday–Friday for those who may have required additional assistance with their application. It was later decided by the Scottish Government that the online application portal should be kept open until May 2022. However, this decision was made to accommodate late applications that arrived after the formal cut off point and was not publicised. Additionally, while the helpline did continue to operate in the extended application period, it was not publicised. No data has been stored on how many applications were received after the initial 8-week period.

As part of the application process, applicants provided the following information (Table 3 below) which was processed by SXL, however the Scottish Government acted as data controller.

Data processed with data sourced from the applicant

• Variable
• Forename
• Surname
• Date of Birth
• Email Address
• National Insurance Number
• Telephone number
• Tax Code
• Bank details of applicant
• Name of employer
• Address of employer
• Details of who funds employers support package
• Number of hours worked per week
• Details of any other employer worked for

Latest findings

In total, 4,799 applicants were deemed eligible by SXL to receive the payment. These 4,799 applicants worked with 3,923 PA employers – these figures include both PAs who were directly employed by the person they provided services to, and PAs who were self-employed - giving an average estimate of 1.22 PAs per employers who meet the eligibility criteria. However, 90% of eligible PAs had just one employer.

The vast majority of eligible PAs were female (82.5% compared to 17.5% eligible male PAs) and of older working age (28.3% were aged 51-60, 18.7% were aged 41-50 and 18.6% were aged 61 and over). Just over one third (36.4%) of eligible PAs were aged under 40.

The highest concentrations of SXL approved PAs per capita – calculated by dividing the number of eligible PA applicants by the total population of their local authority – were found to be in the following five local authorities, skewing heavily towards Island authorities and central belt:

1. Shetland Islands Council (0.39% PAs per capita)

2. Scottish Borders Council (0.28% PAs per capita)

3. Orkney Islands Council (0.25% PAs per capita)

4. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (0.19% PAs per capita)

5. Perth and Kinross Council (0.17% PAs per capita)

Of the 3,923 PA employers approved by SXL, the majority of these were validated by their local authority (82.2%) with a further 17.8% validated by ILF Scotland. This shows that the vast proportion of the PA employment in Scotland is paid via sds option 1.

As with individual PAs, PA employers who were approved by SXL expressed as a percentage per capita of the local authority population, were concentrated in Island authorities and the central belt, with the five highest concentrations found in the following local authorities:

1. Scottish Borders (0.33% PA employers per capita)

2. Shetland Islands Council (0.24% PA employers per capita)

3. Orkney Islands Council (0.23% PA employers per capita)

4. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (0.17% PA employers per capita)

5. Perth and Kinross (0.17% PA employers per capita)

Details on applications that were deemed ineligible (whether due to not meeting the eligibility criteria or simply being incomplete) were not retained, so it is not possible to comment on the profile of ineligible applicants.

Benefits and Limitations of the data

The central benefit of the Thank You Payment dataset is that the £500 payment constitutes an in-built incentive for PAs to present themselves. However, there are a number of ways in which we can anticipate the dataset will still be incomplete, despite this incentive.

Due to the specific eligibility criteria of the Thank You payment a number of groups are likely to be completely absent from the dataset. This includes:

• PAs who work for an employer that privately funds their own care
• PAs who work for young people or children aged under 16 (regardless of their funding arrangements)
• PAs who were inactive in the workforce between March 17th and November 13th, 2020, which may include those who were absent due to sickness or parental leave.
• PAs who cannot verify their tax status, such as PAs who are also undocumented migrants and would therefore not have a national insurance number.

Additionally, PAs who simply missed the 8-week application window and/or were unaware about the extension of the online application portal, whether because of lack of knowledge about the scheme or another reason will also be completely absent. As will those who submitted incomplete applications.

A number of groups are also likely to be under-represented in the dataset. These include:

• PAs who are employed by more than 5 employers. This group were required to apply through a separate system which involved calling the helpline that had the opening hours 09:30-16:30 Monday to Friday. As this created additional obstacles to application, this may have suppressed the number of applicants from this group.
• PAs who are in receipt of cash benefits like Universal Credit may also have been deterred from applying as the Thank You Payment was considered taxable income and thus may have impacted benefit levels.
• PAs who could not secure the cooperation of their employer(s) in applying for the payment are also likely to be under-represented, whether this lack of cooperation stemmed from relationship issues or because their employer has since died or is otherwise uncontactable.
• PAs with low levels of digital literacy and/or access are also likely to be underrepresented, since the application portal was hosted online. There were attempts made to mitigate the impact of this kind of digital exclusion, including disseminating 100 hard copy applications – although who these were disseminated to remains unclear – and establishing the central helpline. However, as with other under-represented groups, any additional obstacles in the application process is likely to have a deterrent effect on applications.

It is not, at present, possible to know what size these groups may be.