Respite Care Scotland, 2014

1. Introduction

This Statistics Release presents information on respite care services provided or purchased by Local Authorities in Scotland over the financial year 2013/14. Respite care is a service intended to benefit a carer and the person he or she cares for by providing a short break from caring tasks. Information is presented for the following age groups of cared-for individuals; young people (aged 0-17), adults aged 18-64 and older people (aged 65+).

Identifying respite care within administrative data sources is recognized as being challenging. Furthermore, due to changes in the guidance under which data has been collected, care must be taken when making comparisons between years. Particular difficulties are associated with comparing the 2013/14 data with that from previous years, due to changes in data recording associated with the roll-out of Self-Directed Support and improvements to local recording systems. Users should interpret the data contained in this Release in the context of these limitations and with reference to the detailed explanatory information provided.

This Release makes estimates of the real-term changes in respite provision over the past seven years in Scotland. In order to achieve this, the numbers of nights and daytime hours of respite care are converted* into the total number of respite weeks provided each year. This approach focuses on how much care has been provided, rather than the numbers of people who have benefitted from the care. The information in this Release does not cover all respite care provided in Scotland, as services are also provided directly through the voluntary sector and Health Boards.

Based on; i) the continuing difficulties associated with obtaining data on respite care that is comparable year-to-year, ii) the fact that these difficulties will likely increase during the roll-out of Self-Directed Support and iii) the relatively high respondent burden associated with the collection of this data, it is anticipated that the future of this publication will be reviewed during 2015.

* Seven respite nights equal one respite week and 52.5 hours equal one respite week.