Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England - 2020-21

This chapter shows the number of requests for support received by local authorities from new clients (those clients not currently in receipt of long term support) and the outcome of those requests (Only those requests for which an outcome, also known as a sequel, had been determined in the reporting period are included in these figures. As such, these figures may include requests received in the previous year where the outcome was determined in 2020-21). Depending on the structure in each local authority, these requests may be received directly into adult social care departments, into partner agencies such as mental health trusts, via a contact centre handling all requests for support from the local authority, or a combination of any of these.

The finance collection does not specifically breakdown expenditure related to frontline requests and so it is not possible to identify the spend on these activities.

A total of 1,915,645 requests for support were received from new clients by local authorities in 2020-21, compared with 1,930,560 requests for support in 2019-20. This equates to an average of 5,250 requests for support from new clients received each day, down from 5,290 last year. Those aged 65 and over accounted for 69.8% (1,337,875) of all requests.

Data is collected on how many clients these requests relate to. In 2020-21, there were an average of 1.5 requests for support per person as the 1,915,645 requests for support were made by 1,270,745 clients.

As can be seen in Table 13 of the reference tables, the East Midlands region reported the largest number of requests for support per client with 1.7 requests per client. Yorkshire and The Humber region reported the lowest number of requests per client (1.4).

As seen in Figure 8 below which shows the number of requests for support per 100,000 adults, the North East region had the highest rate for clients aged 18-64 (2,535 requests per 100,000) and the Yorkshire and The Humber region had the highest rate for clients aged 65 and over (16,125). At a local authority level, St. Helens had the highest rate in the country for clients aged 18-64 (11,000 requests per 100,000 adults compared to the England rate of 1,710). In the 65 and over age band St. Helens was the highest again with 50,915 requests for support per 100,000 adults compared to the England rate of 12,815.

Figure 8: Number of requests for support per 100,000 adults, by age group and local authority, 2020-21

Although requests for support have steadily increased over the last six years, the proportions of requests for support by route of access have remained largely similar. The majority of all requests (78.7%, 1,507,140) originated from the community. The next highest category was discharge from hospital, where 19.0% (364,655) of all requests originated from. Planned entry, diversion from hospital, self-funders with depleted funds and prison referrals made up the remaining 2.3% of requests.

As seen in Figure 9 below, the proportion of requests differ by age group with a higher volume of 65 and over clients requesting support at the point of discharge from hospital.

Source: SALT Collection, 2020-21, NHS Digital - See Table 9 in Reference Data Tables

Source: SALT Collection, 2020-21, NHS Digital - See Table 10 and 11 in Reference Data Tables