Gweithgarwch Gwasanaethau Cymdeithasol: adroddiad ansawdd

Data description

The Social services activity statistics release provides annual information on the activity of local authority social services in the delivery of their responsibilities under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation).

The Code of Practice in relation to the performance and improvement of social services issued on 1 April 2020 introduced a new performance and improvement framework for social services in Wales. It detailed a set of data metrics under the ‘Measuring Activity and Performance’ section to be provided by local authorities which are reported in these statistics.

Statistics are presented for the reporting year 1 April to 31 March.

Classification system

Data is collected as per the detailed guidance issued for each reporting year which provides the definitions for each of the metrics in the ‘Measuring Activity and Performance’ section of the performance and improvement framework for the year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

Statistical concepts and definitions

Definitions are explained in the detailed data collection guidance and those for terms used in the statistical first release are explained here.

Adult

An adult is defined under Section 3 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation) as a person who is aged 18 or over.

Adult at risk

An adult at risk is defined under Section 126 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation) as an adult who is experiencing or is at risk of abuse or neglect; has needs for care and support (whether or not the authority is meeting any of those needs); and as a result of those needs is unable to protect himself or herself against the abuse or neglect or the risk of it.

Assessment

Part 3 Code of Practice (Assessing care and support needs of individuals) under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 sets out when a local authority must offer an individual an assessment. The purpose of an assessment for care and support, or support, is to work with an individual, carer and family, and other relevant individuals to understand their needs, capacity, resources and the outcomes they need to achieve, and then to identify how they can best be supported to achieve them.

Care and support plan

Care and support (and support) plans are defined under Section 54 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation). To have a care and support plan, adults will have had an assessment of their care and support needs which concluded that the adult has eligible needs that can only be met through the provision of a care and support plan. Part 4 Code of Practice (Meeting Needs) under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 provides information on the duties of a local authority in meeting needs for care and support.

Care leaver

A care leaver is defined under Section 104 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation). Part 6 Code of Practice (Looked After and Accommodated Children) under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 sets out arrangements for leaving care.

Carer

A carer is defined under Section 3 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation) as a person who provides or intends to provide care for an adult or disabled child. A person is not a carer for the purposes of the Act if the person provides or intends to provide care under or by virtue of a contract, or as voluntary work.

Child

A child is defined under Section 3 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation) as a person who is aged under 18.

Child looked after

A child looked after by a local authority is a reference under Section 74 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation) to a child who is in its care; or provided with accommodation, for a continuous period of more than 24 hours, by the authority in the exercise of any functions which are social services functions, apart from functions under Section 15, Part 4, or Sections 109, 114 or 115.

Child protection register

The child protection register records all children in the area for whom there are unresolved child protection issues and who are currently the subject of an inter-agency protection plan. Categories of abuse indicate the primary presenting concerns at the time of registration.

Contact

Part 2 Code of Practice (General social care functions of local authorities) under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 refers to individuals ‘contacting’ the information, advice and assistance (IAA) service. The service will offer a first point of contact with the care and support system, and for many people this will be their first encounter with social services.

Direct payment

Direct payments are monetary amounts made available by local authorities to individuals, or their representative, to enable them to meet their care and support needs, or in the case of a carer, their support needs.

Maximum weekly charge

The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and associated regulations allow local authorities to charge for care and support. For 1 April 2024 to March 2025, the maximum weekly charge, or contribution or reimbursement in connection with direct payments, towards the cost of non-residential care and support was £100 per week.

Reablement

Reablement is intended to re-able a person to achieve skills and abilities they previously had to reduce the need for long-term support. A person receiving reablement provided or arranged by a local authority will usually be supported by a reablement team over a limited period, usually up to six weeks (42 days), but may be longer.

Statistical unit

Statistics are published on social services activity including care and support provided to adults and children, and support provided to carers during the reporting year or on the 31 March.

Statistical population

Statistics refer to the numbers of adults, children and carers moving through the social services system and the resulting activity in relation to several aspects of care and support such as contacts, assessments, plans and safeguarding.

Data is also collected for those receiving care and support through annual individual level collections: the Adults receiving care and support census, the Children receiving care and support census and the Children looked after census. Some metrics are populated from the Children looked after census however the data for 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 was not final at the point of publishing the Social Services Activity update, so these metrics were not published.

The Adults receiving care and support census and the Children receiving care and support census capture adults and children with care and support plans on 31 March. This information is also collected in AD/012a and CH/015a respectively. However, adults receiving social services care and support with Care and Treatment plans (as set out in The Mental Health (Care Co-ordination and Care and Treatment Planning) (Wales) Regulations 2011 (UK legislation) were included in AD/012a but not in the Adults receiving care and support census for 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. Adults with care and treatment plans are not included in either dataset for 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 however they are included in both for 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.

The Social Services Capacity and Demand collection also reports monthly on aspects of care and support.

Data may differ across datasets due to differences in requirements, frequency and timing of reporting, different populations included by some local authorities, and the validation applied to datasets.

Reference area

Statistics are published at Wales and local authority level.

Time coverage

Data is collected on an annual basis for a reporting year from 1 April to 31 March. Some data items are collected for 31 March only. Data is available for 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 onwards.

Source data

The Social services activity data is collected directly from individual local authorities. Data collection is based on the detailed Local authority social services performance and improvement framework guidance.

Frequency of data collection

Data is submitted to Welsh Government from individual local authorities on an annual basis for a reporting year from 1 April to 31 March. Data is expected to be returned by the end of the May following the close of the reporting year.

Data collection

Data is submitted on Excel spreadsheets directly from each individual local authority via Objective Connect, a web-based tool to securely share and receive files. There is one spreadsheet for adults (including adult carers) and one spreadsheet for children (including young carers).

Data validation

Data validation occurs at multiple stages before publication.

Local authorities undertake their own validations prior to submitting data to Welsh Government. There will be some differences in the types of validations carried out by local authorities, largely because of underlying differences in administrative data systems.

Data collection forms are pre-populated with data from the previous year.

A return is received by Welsh Government where further validation is performed to improve data quality.

Data for each individual local authority is compared with previous years’ data with differences of 20% or more between years highlighted within forms and data providers required to explain such differences. Data logic and dependencies are checked as well as comparisons made across all local authorities. For some metrics, rates per general population are considered to identify outliers.

Comments are also scrutinised to determine consistency of reporting against the guidance.

All anomalies are returned to local authorities for investigation.

Welsh Government compiles analyses in the format required for publication.

Data compilation

Each individual local authority submits two returns (one for adults and one for children) for each reporting year. Data is processed and validated by the Data Collection team in Welsh Government.

Where possible, data is taken from other local authority collections. For example, some metrics in relation to children looked after are populated with data from the Children looked after census. 

Adjustment

Ordinarily, adjustments are not necessary. Where data has not been provided, this is recorded as missing data.

Quality assurance

Our statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics (UK Statistics Authority). They are produced free from any political interference.

Quality assurance is undertaken in line with the Statistical Quality Management Strategy and the Quality pillar of the Code of Practice for Statistics (UK Statistics Authority).

In addition to dataset validation checks, data is also checked at against other sources, for example where possible, data items are compared against the individual level Adults receiving care and support and Children receiving care and support datasets, and local authorities are required to explain and reconcile differences.

Quality assessment

These statistics are published as official statistics in development (Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)). Data quality issues have been identified as the data collection process continues to be embedded consistently across all local authorities. Therefore, some data items in this collection are incomplete or do not comply to exact standardisation across all returns. However, we have taken the decision to publish these statistics to account for known user needs whilst we work on improvements in the collection and towards official statistics status.

For the reporting year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, data was not provided from all 22 local authorities for 54 (50%) metrics (excluding metrics populated from the Children looked after census). Typically, between one and three local authorities were missing data. In addition to missing data, it is apparent that there remain inconsistencies for some metrics which are likely explained by differing interpretations of how data should be reported and local practice. Variation and differences across local authorities are being investigated further.

User needs

These statistics inform users about the care and support and support for carers local authorities provide in the delivery of their responsibilities under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation).

The main users of the statistics are:

• Ministers
• members of the Welsh Parliament (Senedd) and the Senedd Research Service in the Welsh Parliament (Senedd)
• officials within the Department for Health, Social Care and Early Years in Welsh Government
• other areas of the Welsh Government
• local authorities and their partners
• the research community including students, academics and universities
• individual citizens, third sector organisations and private companies
• other UK government departments
• media

The statistics are used in a variety of ways. Some examples of these are:

• advice to ministers
• to inform debate in the Welsh Parliament and beyond
• to provide publicly available data on the activity of local authority social services in Wales
• to monitor of the volume and flow within the social services system
• to inform local authority social services departments’ practice and planning

If you are a user and do not feel the above list adequately reflects your needs, please let us know via stats.pss@gov.wales.

User satisfaction

Feedback relating to the social services activity statistics is welcome and can be submitted to stats.pss@gov.wales.

Completeness

Not all local authorities provided complete returns for 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

For several metrics Carmarthenshire reported data between 1 April 2024 and 20 February 2025 only due to the implementation of a new client database within Children's Services.

Across local authorities, missing data includes where data is not currently recorded, data is not recorded consistently or in a way that is reportable, or data has not been provided by the local authority. Such data can only be used as an indication of the activity reported by the selected local authorities and does not represent the full Wales position.

Overall accuracy

Data is sourced from a collection which is still being embedded. As such, statistics are considered official statistics in development. Data quality issues have been identified which are expected to improve in future years. Broadly, these relate to missing data and inconsistencies in the way data is reported.

The statistics are based on administrative data. Consequently, data entry and processing errors (non-sampling error) are possible. These could occur when data are entered incorrectly into administrative systems or through measurement errors resulting from inconsistent interpretations of definitions.

To reduce non-sampling error, detailed guidance provides explanations of the data metrics within the data collection, and a range of data validation checks are performed prior to publication.

Officials currently meet with data providers on a quarterly basis where data reporting is discussed and any issues are resolved. Given data is collected annually it may be that changes to guidance are not implemented until the next reporting year.

Data revision

The published statistics are not routinely revised, however there may be changes to previous years’ data identified as part of processing data for the current year. It may take time to update local authority systems which could mean changes particularly in relation to activity shortly before the end of the reporting year.

If an error is discovered after publication, statistics will be revised and clearly noted. Any revisions to the data are noted in the statistical release and in the information accompanying the StatsWales datasets.

Notes at the end of the release inform the users whether the outputs have been revised or not (denoted [r]) and give an indication of the size of the revision between the latest and previous release.

Users are informed about revisions in line with the Statement on revisions, errors and postponements.

Timeliness

Initial submission of data from local authorities to Welsh Government is expected by the end of the May following the close of the reporting year. There is typically a nine-month lag between the reference period of the statistics and publication. However, more recent publications have been published later than this: data for the reporting year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 was published twelve months after the end of the year.

Punctuality

Welsh Government aims to publish statistics as soon as possible after the data reference date.

Outputs adhere to the Code of Practice for statistics by pre-announcing the date of publication through the Statistics and research page on upcoming releases. Furthermore, should the need arise to postpone an output, this would follow the Statement on revisions, errors and postponements.

Geographical comparability

Local authorities have different data capture systems however the detailed guidance should ensure that data is inputted consistently across authorities.

All four UK nations publish data on adults receiving care and support separately. The outputs differ, reflecting the different legislation and policies, methodologies and data collection processes of the different nations. A UK Health Statistics theme group on Adult Social Care (Government Analysis Function) is in place which considers comparability and coherence of adult social care statistics. Summary information can be requested from gss.health@ons.gov.uk and more detailed work is ongoing to fully understand and describe the extent to which the nations’ statistics are comparable.

In England, the Department of Health & Social Care publish an annual Adult social care activity report and the Department for Education publish statistics on children in need.

In Scotland, data on People supported through Social Care Services is published annually by Public Health Scotland, with data on Adult Support and Protection published by Scottish Government and several statistical publications relating to children's social work in Scotland.

In Northern Ireland, Statistics on community care for adults are published by the Department of Health, as well as statistics on Children in need (Department of Health, Northern Ireland).

Comparability over time

Data is available from the reporting year 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 onwards.

There have been several changes to data collection requirements which are detailed in the Revisions History section of each guidance document issued. These include new requirements as well as amendments to existing requirements and further clarifying guidance.

A guidance document is issued for each reporting year. Guidance for the years 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 are published on the Local authority social services performance and improvement framework guidance page.

Coherence (internal)

Data is collected from each local authority based on the same detailed requirements and guidance document. Comparisons between local authority areas are valid however it is apparent from the data that there remain inconsistencies for some metrics.

Publication

The statistics are pre-announced and then published at 9.30am on the date of publication on the Welsh Government website.

An HTML report is published, providing analysis and insights using charts and commentary. Data tables for all analysis covered in the HTML report are published on StatsWales.

The data available on StatsWales can be viewed and manipulated online or downloaded into spreadsheets. Additionally, datasets can be accessed using the public API for StatsWales.

Online databases

The full historical series of statistics are published in the Social services sub-topic on StatsWales.

Documentation on methodology

The following sources of information are relevant to the data collection and the published statistics on the activity of social services:

• Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (UK legislation)
• Social services codes of practice
• Local authority social services performance and improvement framework guidance

Quality documentation

All quality information is published in this quality report.

The administrative systems underpinning the data exist for operational purposes and are used for internal analysis by local authorities. Local authorities conduct validation exercises before providing the data, which leads to some resource burden. Welsh Government have been providing funding to each individual local authority to support their ability to collate and provide statutory national social services data requirements.

Confidentiality: policy

The Welsh Government’s statistics and research statement on confidentiality and data access describes our approach to data confidentiality and conforming with the data governance principle of the Trustworthiness pillar in the Code of Practice for Statistics (UK Statistics Authority).

Confidentiality: data treatment

The published Children looked after statistics on StatsWales sources from the Children looked after census have been rounded to the nearest five. Where there are fewer than five children in any group, the actual number has been suppressed and replaced by the symbol [c].