Adult day services and respite services survey: follow-up letter

Dear all,

Adult day services and respite services survey

Further to my letter of 25 May, I wish to thank you for providing detailed responses to the adult day services and respite services survey. 

A summary of the data gathered is attached to this letter. This data has provided meaningful insight into the pressures impacting the successful reopening of services throughout Scotland. It indicates that although day services and respite services are returning to pre-pandemic capacity, they are still running at reduced capacity in a lot of areas. Day services play a crucial role in supporting the people who use them and their unpaid carers and families, and it is essential that these services return to full capacity as possible.

The guidance for building-based day services, as updated on 26 May and 28 September 2022, makes it clear that building-based day services should return to pre-pandemic capacity wherever possible, while operating safely in line with COVID-19 guidance. It states that there is no longer a legal requirement for physical distancing between services users or staff. I am aware that physical distancing requirements had limited the capacity of some services, and I urge you to ensure that the updated guidance is fully implemented to enable services to return to pre-pandemic capacity wherever possible. Please note also that updated guidance in relation to the wearing of face masks and testing was issued on 7 September 2022. Staff and visitors within social care settings (including building-based day services and respite care services) do not need to routinely wear a face mask or face covering at all times.

The survey will be repeated in November 2022 in order to establish how much progress has been made towards increasing capacity since the publication of updated guidance.

Thank you once again for your survey returns and all the helpful contextual information that was provided with them which has greatly helped our understanding of the pressures faced by the sector.

Should you have queries, please contact Andrew Macdonald in the Improving Standards and Quality Division via ASCAS@gov.scot.

Thank you once again.

Yours sincerely,

Humza Yousaf MSP

Annex

Summary of survey findings

Returns

HSCPs adopted varying approaches to responses to the formatting of data. Some provided supporting information in narrative form and along with caveats. This additional information is a source of useful contextual information and helps to build a richer picture out of the raw data. A summary of the returns is provided below.

For both day and respite services this data includes specialist buildings based services, community based services and services such provided by care homes within their establishments or in the case of respite within their overall registered capacity – often on an ad hoc/variable basis.

	Day services	%	Respite services	%
HSCP returns	26	83.9	24	77.0
Services
External	121	44.6	91	64.0
Internal	149	55.0	51	35.9
Total	271		142
Main client type
Elderly/frail	85		54
Mental health	2		2
Dementia	27		32
Learning disability	120		34
Physical/sensory disability	10		10
Other	27		10

N.B. % totals do not add up to 100% due to rounding.

	Reported operating status
	Open	Partially open or operating at reduced capacity	Closed
Day services	48.7	38.4	11.8
Respite services	68.3	16.9	14.1

Capacity

Further analysis was undertaken to gain an indication of what the impact of reductions in services might have for actual capacity. In order to achieve a like for like comparison only those services which provided information in terms of ‘places’ were counted. (Those which provided returns with counts in hours or people, or were not able to specify defined maximum capacities were not included).

	Services counted	Capacity %
Day services	207	61.8
Respite services	76	70.2

N.B. These figures do not reflect overall capacity in the sector and do not take account of any alternative types of service that HSCPs have put in place to replace capacity such as additional community based or online/digital supports which could not be reflected in the count.

High level thematic findings

Through analysis of the data and the narrative provided with the survey returns the following thematic issues have been identified.

• Covid guidance/restrictions were cited as reasons for current reductions in capacity in returns from several HSCPs. As well as the direct impact on the service, several responses also referred to the impact on and interdependency with transport arrangements

• some HSCPs were in the process of undertaking risk assessments with a view to increasing capacity
• current Covid outbreaks were affecting capacity at the time of the survey (by their impact upon both staff and service users
• service redesign (including transition from buildings based to community based provision) was cited as a reason for reductions in capacity in some day services by several HSCPs
• recruitment and retention - workforce issues were identified as a significant factor for current reductions in capacity
• some HSCPs reported the provision of online/digital support which has supplemented capacity