Statistics

Proposal for a new data collection on carers

December 1, 2016 by hsca No Comments | Category Health and social care

Carers across Scotland provide unpaid care and support to relatives, friends and neighbours who need help because of illness or disability.

We estimate that around 788,000 people in Scotland are carers and annually they save the Scottish Economy nearly £11 billion, equivalent to the cost of the NHS in Scotland.

The new Carers (Scotland) Act will begin on the 1 April 2018 and will place a duty on local authorities to provide support to carers and to prepare Adult Carer Support Plans and Young Carer Statements which will identify carers’ needs and personal outcomes. Local Authorities will also have to provide information and advice services to carers covering things like care planning, advocacy, claiming benefits and carers rights.

We are currently consulting on a new data collection on Carers to help monitor the impact of the Carers Act. This data collection will be looking to gather baseline data for the year leading up to commencement of the Act and will be one part of a wider research and evaluation strategy into the impact of the Act.

The data specification has been developed by a short life working group consisting of carers, carer centres, national carers organisations, local authorities, health boards and Scottish Government. The proposal is asking for a lot of information and we would particularly like to know which items you think are essential for monitoring and which could be dropped from the final specification.

We welcome comments from everyone with an interest in this data and you can answer as few or as many of the questions that you like.

We have made the consultation paper available and your response should be emailed to SWStat@gov.scot by the 23rd December 2016.

Tags: carer, consultation, health, socialcare, statistics

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