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

Local authorities report information relating to carers in both the activity and finance returns. This information includes the number of carers being supported, and the costs associated with providing this support, as well as those that have been assessed or reviewed by the local authority but received no support in the year. Data on carers relates to unpaid carers of all ages who provide a substantial amount of care on a regular basis for someone aged 18 or over.

Please Note: Local authorities noted a variety of data quality issues relating to their carer data. For example, some local authorities have difficulties obtaining data from third parties, or some case management systems can only record carers and cared-for clients on a one to one basis. Full details of the data quality issues can be found in the accompanying data quality report. It should also be noted that a number of local authorities advised us of continued data cleansing and as such year-on-year trends may be a result of this rather than service provision. This should be considered when examining the data relating to this area, and particularly when considering local trends.

In 2020-21 388,730 carers were either supported or assessed by the local authorities during the year, up 3.3% or 12,600 carers since 2019-20. This measure often fluctuates year on year however some local authorities advised us that there was increased demand, with the role of unpaid carers increasing due to lockdowns and shielding in 2020-21.

Gross current expenditure on social support: support to carers was £156 million in 2020-21, a 6.6% decrease from £167 million in 2019-20. Previously, local authorities advised that expenditure related to carers could sometimes be captured within a different category in ASC-FR and so this expenditure should not be directly compared with the activity data.

Whilst over half (54.3%) of local authority supported carers are aged 18 to 64, 7,105 or 1.8% are aged under 18, and almost one in ten (35,680) are aged 85 and over.

The West Midlands region has the highest proportion of supported carers under 18 at 6.7% (1,855 carers) and also the highest proportion of those aged 18-25 at 8.1%. 58.0% of supported carers in London are aged 26 to 64 (59.7%), and almost half (48.8%) of the  supported carers in the East of England are aged 65 and over.

Figure 27: Overview of support provided to carers in the year, 2020-21

Source: SALT Collection, 2020-21, NHS Digital - See Table 47 in Reference Data Tables

Of the total 388,730 carers supported in 2020-21, 87.0% (338,180) received Direct Support, which includes Direct Payments, Part Direct Payments, Local Authority Managed Personal Budgets, Local Authority Commissioned Support and the provision of Information Advice and other Universal Services or Signposting. This is a slight decrease from the previous year where 84.1% of carers received Direct Support.

The most common support for carers consisted of Information, Advice and other Universal Services or Signposting, with 229,660 carers receiving this as the most intensive form of support during the year (A hierarchy is used to avoid double counting. Those carers who received Direct Payments, Part direct payments, LA managed personal budgets or LA commissioned support may also have received Information advice and other universal services or signposting). This accounted for 59.1% of carers receiving support in 2020-21, up from 55.1% last year.

In addition, 33,045 (8.5%) carers received respite or other forms of carer support delivered to the cared-for person in 2020-21 (a decrease from the 2019-20 proportion of 12.2%). The most common example of respite is care arranged by the local authority which might involve the client being placed in a residential setting in order to give the carer a break from their caring responsibilities.