Section 1 - Referrals

ASP referrals can be made by different stakeholders to a Health and Social Care Partnership’s (HSCP) Adult Support and Protection (ASP) Service where it is known or believed that an adult is at risk, and that further action may be required to protect the person’s well-being, property or financial affairs.

Number of referrals

Overall, there were 67,971 ASP referrals to local authorities across Scotland in 2025-26. This equates to 1,456 referrals per 100,000 people aged 16+.

Please note these referral numbers relate to the number of referrals received by local authorities, not the number of people who have been referred. One individual person may be the subject of multiple referrals during a year.

It is important to note that there is variation in how local authorities count ASP referrals. The ways in which local authorities collect referral numbers include:

• Every referral made to the local authority: this means that if multiple referrals about one individual or incident are received from different referrers, each referral is counted.

• Every referral made about an incident or individual: this means that if multiple referrers contact the local authority about the same incident or individual, this is only counted as one referral.

• After decision of appropriate referral: some local authorities have screening processes of all referrals. Referrals to ASP services are only counted as such if they are deemed relevant to ASP, following this screening.

The full definition of what is classed as a referral can be found under in the glossary of the accompanying technical report.

Referrals by source

Across Scotland, Police Scotland was the most common source of ASP referrals in 2025-26, with 13,370 referrals (20% of the total 67,971 referrals) (figure 1). The second most common source was care homes with 12,871 (19%).

In the ASP NMDS, different parts of the NHS are split into five distinct categories to gain a better understanding of where NHS referrals are coming from. These categories are NHS Acute Services, NHS Primary Care, NHS 24, NHS Community Health Services and NHS Specialist Drug and Alcohol Services. When these five NHS categories are combined, the NHS becomes the third most common referrer to local authority ASP services in 2025-26, with 9,506 referrals (14% of the total).

Care at Home providers were the source of 4,687 referrals (7%) and ‘Social Work – Adults (including Mental Health Officers)’ were the source of 4,563 (7%).

The full breakdown of referral numbers by referrer category can be found in the accompanying supplementary tables.

Figure 1: The highest number of referrals to local authority ASP services in 2025-26 came from Police Scotland (13,370).

Bar chart showing the nine most common referral sources (including NHS combined services) to local authority ASP services by number of referrals in 2025-26.

In figure 1, ‘Social work – adults (incl. MHO)’ means ‘Social work – adults (including Mental Health Officers)’. ‘Other third sector’ was the category ‘Third sector organisation (not covered by the other categories)’ in the ASP NMDS returns template. ‘All remaining categories’ was created for this chart and refers to all other categories given within the ASP NMDS for referral sources.

Data quality notes and comparison to previous year

The number of ASP referrals, and the analysis of ASP referrals by source, in 2025-26 are not directly comparable to the statistics for 2024-25. This is because two local authorities made changes to how they record or count referrals between the two years. The changes made by both should lead to improvements in the data they report on referrals in the longer term. There is more information in the data quality section of the accompanying technical report. The Scottish Government - with the support of Iriss and the ASP NMDS learning partners - will continue to work with local authorities towards improved and consistent collection of data on ASP referrals in future years.