Survey of Adult Carers in England, 2023-24 guidance for local authorities

The survey will feed into monitoring of the impact of the national carers strategy and it will also be used to populate a number of measures in the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework.

• 1D - Carer-reported quality of life score (Questions 7-12)
• 1I(2) - Proportion of carers who reported that they had as much social contact as they would like (Question 11)
• 3B - Overall satisfaction of carers with social services (Question 4)
• 3C - Proportion of carers who report that they have been included or consulted in discussion about the person they care for (Question 19)
• 3D(2) - Proportion of carers who find it easy to find information about support (Question 17)

This survey administration guidance document sets out the actions that Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs) will need to perform during 2023-2024 to carry out the survey and provide data to NHS England.  

We have provided additional supporting information to assist you with correctly identifying the eligible population for this survey. 

We have provided some additional guidance about the new validation process, submitting the data return and data quality reports.

Any additional questions or free text boxes that your council would like to include as part of the survey (including those approved for previous surveys) should be sent for review, using the additional questions form. The form needs to be returned to [email protected] by Friday 8 September 2023. A selection of previously approved questions is available for consideration within the question bank.

Translated versions of the questionnaire, covering letter, reminder letter and consent form are now available for all 17 languages:

Arabic translated materials
Bengali translated materials
French translated materials
Greek translated materials
Gujarati translated materials
Hindi translated materials
Italian translated materials
Mandarin translated materials
Polish translated materials
Portuguese translated materials
Punjabi translated materials
Somali translated materials
Spanish translated materials
Tamil translated materials
Turkish translated materials
Urdu translated materials
Vietnamese translated materials

The final data return will be made available through the Strategic Data Collection System (SDCS). For more information on SDCS, contact the data collections team. Only the final version that is available on SDCS can be submitted.

A draft version of the data return is available. 

The final data return is protected to ensure the structure of the data return is not changed. Councils are able to request an unprotected version of the data return for their internal use only. The unprotected version of the data return must not be used for the submission that is made to NHS England.

If councils require a copy of the unprotected data return, please email [email protected] to request it. Please include in the email the reason you require the unprotected version of the data return and confirmation that you understand that only the version on SDCS can be used to submit data to NHS England.