Self-directed support, Scotland, 2015-16

4. Expenditure

4.1 Expenditure Recording

The 2016 Social Care Survey asked local authorities to return information on the gross value of the agreed budget associated with each care package associated with a Self-directed Support option. For the analysis in this section, the budgeted expenditure associated with Option 4 is included under the specific options - Option 1, 2 and / or 3 - of the mixture chosen for each client.

Section 2.2 described the issues surrounding recording systems and the ability of local authorities to capture Self-directed Support information during 2015-16. There, four local authorities are identified who suffered from incomplete Self-directed Support options recording. In addition, variation in the recording of budgeted expenditure is also evident from the data. All local authorities who returned client information on those receiving Option 1 were able to record some budgeted expenditure under Option 1 with the exception of Angus, who were unable to return any expenditure information. However:

• Of the 30 local authorities who were able to return client information on those receiving Option 2, four local authorities were not able to provide any budgeted expenditure information. See table 1 below and accompanying notes for details.
• Of the 29 local authorities who were able to return client information on those receiving Option 3, 10 local authorities were not able to provide any budgeted expenditure information. See table 1 below and accompanying notes for details.
• In addition to problems at the aggregate level, all local authorities had numerous instances of individual clients with no budgeted expenditure against a recorded Self-directed Support option.

In total, only 18 local authorities were able to provide client information on all Self-directed Support options and include some budgeted expenditure against those options. In light of the analyses carried out in the following sub-sections, however, all local authorities with recorded budgeted expenditure are included.

4.2 Expenditure Breakdown

In total, the combined values of all recorded budgets associated with a Self-directed Support option in 2015-16 was £383m. Given the expenditure recording issues highlighted above - in addition to the recording issues described in Section 2.2 - this figure represents an underestimate of the true value. The observed figure represents 24% of gross expenditure by local authorities on community based Social Work services in 2015-16 ⁽¹⁾ .

Table 1 shows the breakdown of total budgeted expenditure for Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3. Given the expenditure recording issues highlighted in Section 4.1, the total budget values for the three options should not be compared to one another. The average (median) budget value per client may, however, be compared in this way. Table 1 shows that Option 2 is associated with the highest average budget values, followed by Option 1.

Option 3 is associated with much lower average values. This pattern is not surprising, since clients choosing Option 1 and Option 2 are on average younger than clients choosing Option 3. Younger clients are shown to have higher / more complex levels of need than older clients, and as a result average expenditure will be higher.

Table 1: breakdown of budgeted expenditure by Self-directed Support option, 2015-16

Figure 12 shows the distribution of budgeted expenditure per client for Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3. For Option 3, the highest proportion of budgets (38%) are in the less than £1,000 category - the proportion of clients in each budget category then steadily falls as budget values rise. For Option 1, in contrast, the highest proportion of budgets (29%) are in the £1,000 to £5,000 category. For budget categories above these values, the proportion of clients in each budget category then steadily falls. The pattern for Option 2 is less clear. The highest proportion of budgets (22%) are in the £1,000 - £5,000 category - the proportion of budgets in each category then fluctuates between 9% and 18% for budget values up to £100,000.

Figure 12: histograms of client gross budgets by Self-directed Support option, 2015-16