Scottish Government

4. Background information on the collection of the data

The Self-directed Support (Direct Payments) survey began in 2001 and collects information on Direct Payments from all Local Authorities in Scotland.

The format of the survey was changed in 2006 to a person based return. This may have resulted in some inconsistency compared to previous years. The new survey asks for gender, date of birth, client group, value of direct payment throughout the year, weekly hours in the direct payment package, type of direct payment provision and type of care delivery along with a number of other variables.

The new form has allowed for more accurate calculation of average direct payment values. These are calculated by determining for how many days each person received a direct payment in 2007/08. The value of the direct payment is then divided by this number of days and the result is multiplied by the number of days in the year to estimate the value of a direct payment if the had client received it throughout the entire year. This can then be averaged to allow more accurate comparisons between, for example, client groups.

This publication contains average direct payment values calculated using both methods to allow for the continuation of existing time series.

All 32 local authorities provided information. However, a number of Local Authorities had difficulty providing some of the data.

Some column totals in the tables in this document may not exactly equal the sum of their component parts due to the effects of rounding.

Further information

Further details and analysis of the data presented in this Statistics Release are available on request from the address given below. The Statistics Release is available on the Internet by accessing the Scottish Government web site: - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Health/Publications

Information at local authority level is shown in the annex to this Statistics Release.

Contact: Steven Gillespie
Tel: 0131 244 3777
E-mail: SWStat@scotland.gov.uk

This statistics release was published on 28 ^th October 2008.