Care at Home Statistics for Scotland
Support provided or funded by local authorities in Scotland 2024/25

About this release

This annual release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides information on people receiving care at home support and services in Scotland which is fully or partially funded by the local authority for financial year 2024/25. Care at home is care tailored to the needs of an individual that is provided in a person’s own home. Packages of care can include support with personal care (for example bathing, hair washing, continence management such as toileting and simple treatments such as assistance with medication and application of creams and lotions) but also support with other tasks around the house (for example cleaning or meal preparation).  

This release presents the number and demographic profile of people receiving care at home, alongside the total hours of care received and the percentage of people receiving personal care. It includes analysis by local authority, locality, and deprivation, and reports on the proportion of recipients of care at home who also had community alarms and/or telecare. Community alarms and telecare are technology and equipment which support people to live safer and independent lives by reducing the risks of falls and vulnerable situations. This release also examines emergency healthcare use for people receiving care at home, including hospital admissions, bed days, and Accident & Emergency (A&E) attendances.

Some local authorities were not able to provide care at home information for all quarters. To reflect this a Scotland ‘All Areas Submitted’ total has been provided and this will be the total of all the local authorities that submitted information each quarter. Please note this means the Scotland ‘All Areas Submitted’ total may not be comparable between quarters.

Main points

• The estimated number of people who received care at home support in 2024/25 was 97,965.
• The estimated number of hours of care at home received in 2024/25 was just under 39.2 million. Note, this figure excludes hours for Aberdeen City due to data quality issues. Therefore, the estimated number hours of care at home will underestimate the true Scotland figure.
• There were 90% of people receiving care at home services in January - March 2025 who received personal care.
• During January - March 2025, of the care at home support funded by the local authorities, the private sector provided half of the Care at home services (50%), followed by local authorities (41%) and the third sector (8%).
• In 2024/25, of the people receiving care at home 57% also had a community alarm and/or telecare.
• In 2024/25, there were just under 35% of people who received care at home who required at least one attendance at A&E whilst just under 34% required at least one emergency admission to hospital. This analysis is based on people whose care at home record included a Community Health Index (CHI) number, which is required to link social care and health records.
• In January - March 2025, people living in communities in the two most deprived quintiles (as measured using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) had the highest level of support through care at home with 17,540 people in deprivation quintile 1 and 17,665 people in deprivation quintile 2. This compares to 10,205 people living in the 20% least deprived communities (deprivation quintile 5). This pattern is consistent across most of the reported years (2019/20–2024/25).

This is a line chart with five lines. Each line represents a deprivation quintile and shows the trend from January to March 2018 to January to March 2025. The lines show the percentage of people receiving care at home accounted for by each deprivation quintile over time. Deprivation quintile 5 (the least deprived communities) has the lowest percentage in each time period presented. Followed by deprivation quintile 4 and then deprivation quintile 3. Deprivation quintile 1 (the most deprived communities) generally accounts for the largest percentage of people receiving care at home except in January to March 2018 and January to March 2025 when deprivation quintile 2 accounted for the highest percentages. In January to March 2019 Deprivation quintiles 1and 2 accounted for the same percentage (25.2%). In January to March 2025 the percentages accounted for by each deprivation category were 24.5% deprivation quintile 1, 24.7% deprivation quintile 2, 19.6% deprivation quintile 3, 16.8% deprivation quintile 4 and 14.3% deprivation quintile 5.

Close

Percentage of people receiving Care at home accounted for by each deprivation quintile, Scotland (All Areas Submitted)

In Scotland the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is used to measure deprivation. It combines information on income, employment, education, housing, health, crime and geographical access. For this analysis, Scotland is divided into five equal groups based on population size. Deprivation quintile 1 relates to the most deprived communities and deprivation quintile 5 relates to the least deprived communities. SIMD 2020v2 was used for the analysis.

Background

Information is provided for people whose care at home service is fully or partially funded by the local authority. The services can be delivered through local authority in-house teams, independent providers and the Third Sector. Note people entirely self-funding their care are not included.

Local authorities are one of the strategic partners delivering health and social care along with NHS Boards and Integration Authorities. The analyses in the dashboard are presented by the local authority area funding the package of care.

Care at home data is submitted by local authorities as part of the Source Social Care dataset. PHS collects and annually publishes a suite of statistics on local authority funded social care including the People requiring a Social care assessment and Care at home services publication which provides information on the number of individuals waiting for an assessment for social care services, the number of individuals assessed and waiting for a package of care at home to allow them to live at home or in the community and the number of hours of care that are being waited for. This publication is released monthly. The latest publication is 29 September 2026.

In order to develop these statistics and due to the changes in the collection and processing, the figures in this release are classified as ‘Official Statistics in development’. Further information on the data collection is available on the PHS website.

Scotland's social care system is undergoing a transformation, and changes are needed to how data is collected, shared and used to improve outcomes for people using and delivering services in Scotland. The Social Care Data Intelligence Programme Board (SCDIPB), consisting of representatives from across the social care sector, are leading efforts to modernise the national social care data landscape. More details are available at Transforming social care data in Scotland. We welcome feedback on the care at home statistics and these wider data developments.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be in 2027.