Social Services: Older People
(asked on 3rd February 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what they estimate to be the total number of older people accessing local authority-funded social care in each of the last seven years, expressed in numbers and as proportion of the total relevant age group.
Until 2013-14, the Health and Social Care Information Centre collected Referrals, Assessments and Packages of Care (RAP) data from local authorities. These data included the number of people aged 65 and over receiving local authority arranged social care services and are shown in the table.
The information collected does not distinguish between local authority funded and local authority arranged care.
Year | Clients aged over 65 receiving services during the period | As a percentage of the population aged 65 and over |
2007-08 | 1,220,660 | 15% |
2008-09 | 1,215,575 | 15% |
2009-10 | 1,147,695 | 14% |
2010-11 | 1,064,475 | 12% |
2011-12 | 991,230 | 11% |
2012-13 | 895,940 | 10% |
2013-14 | 853,615 | 9% |
Source: RAP P1 return and Office of National Statistics Mid Year Population Estimates | ||
RAP was replaced after 2013-14 with the present system, which collects data in a different way that is not directly comparable with the previous system. During 2014-15, 602,885 service users aged 65 and over accessed long term support and 184,645 accessed short term support from their local authority. As a proportion of the population aged 65 and over, these two figures combined represent 8.3% of the total population of the same age.