Scottish Care Homes Census

Dear Care Home Manager,

This letter informs you of the arrangements for the 2024 Scottish Care Home Census.

Background

The Scottish Care Home Census has been running since 2003, and continues to provide a rich and important source of information on care home provision in Scotland used by policy makers and care home providers. The latest care home census publication (Nov 2023) can be found on the Public Health Scotland (PHS) website.

2024 Care Home Census

The Care Home Census is a long running annual statistical collection which provides key financial information and resident level data for all funding types which is not available from other sources. This financial information and analysis informs a range of important considerations, including on capital limits for residential care, free personal and nursing care allowances and enables an understanding of the costs and benefits of associated policy development. Resident level data is important in helping us understand more about the population living in care homes, and remains valuable to inform continued planning for the National Care Service.

Given the importance of this data, the 2024 Care Home Census will open on 6 May 2024 and close 6 weeks later on 16 June 2024. This data will cover the year April 2023 to March 2024 (2023/24) only.      

The census form can be completed through the Care Inspectorate eForms system. You can log in to the eForms system on the Care Inspectorate website from 6 May 2024.

Changes to resident information

There are no changes to the information required since the previous census.

Help and guidance

Guidance on completing the form accompanies this letter on our website.

If the guidance doesn’t answer your questions then you can contact the Care Inspectorate Contact Centre helpline on: 0345 600 9527.

Future of the Care Home Census

As you may know, Scottish Government, working in partnership with PHS and Care Inspectorate, have been undertaking a review of the entire care home data landscape. The review has considered improvements around the content, quality and frequency of current data collections, along with alternative methods of data collection, and aims to ensure a coherent suite of data collections, minimise the burden on data providers and meet the existing and emerging needs of data users.  

The summary report and recommendations from the review are due to be published later this month (May 2024), and will be available on the Care Home Data Review section of our website. We are currently setting up a Care Home Data Working Group to prioritise the recommendations from the review and to set out a phased programme of work to implement them. The medium and long term future of the Scottish Care Home Census, along with the other national care home data sources, will be determined by the working group.

Thank you for your continued support, and for completing the Care Home Census return for 2023/24.

Yours sincerely,

Neil Grant
Head of Social Care Analysis Unit
Scottish Government