Self-directed support, Scotland, 2016-17

1. Introduction

The Self-directed Support Act came into force on the 1 ^st April 2014 and placed a duty on Local Authorities to offer people who are eligible for social care a range of choices over how they receive their social care services and support. Self-directed Support ( SDS) allows people, their carers and their families to make informed choices on what their support looks like and how it is delivered. The Act means that, since the 1 ^st April 2014, Local Authorities have been required to offer choices to all new social care clients, and to all existing clients at point of review. The data reported here relates to the third year of implementation of SDS (2016-17) and follows up on previous SDS publications.

SDS allows people to choose from a number of different options for receiving support and services. The person's individual budget can be:

Option 1: Taken as a Direct Payment.
Option 2: Allocated to an organisation that the person chooses and the person is in charge of how it is spent.
Option 3: The person chooses to allow the council to arrange and determine their services.
Option 4: The person can choose a mix of these options for different types of support.

The Scottish Government has been collecting data on Direct Payments (Option 1) since 2001 and as part of the annual Social Care Survey from 2013. The introduction of SDS resulted in changes to the format of the Social Care Survey from 2015, with information now being gathered about the provision of services and support through all of the SDS options over the course of a financial year.

This report provides analysis of information collected in the 2017 Social Care Survey for all SDS options. Further analysis of the 2016-17 Direct Payments data can be found in the publication 'Social Care Services, Scotland, 2017': http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/12/3849.

The introduction of SDS was a significant change to practice that has required changes to the data that is collected and the design of new systems to collect and record that data. To date, data on SDS for two Local Authorities remains incomplete and the results presented here should be interpreted with this in mind. However, progress has been made in data quality since 2014-15 when 22 Local Authorities returned full data.

The remainder of this report is divided into four sections. Section 2 discusses issues surrounding the implementation of SDS across Local Authorities and the extent of data recording issues. Section 3 presents demographic information on those social care clients who made a choice regarding their services and support in 2016-17. Section 4 presents information on the support needs of clients and who provided the support. Lastly, Section 5 presents data on budgeted expenditure for clients who made a choice regarding their services and support in 2016-17.