Official Statistics

Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024

Published 1 February 2024

Applies to England

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Main points

COVID-19 and flu vaccination in social care settings

As of week ending 14 January 2024, the proportions who had received an autumn booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine were:

• 9.6% of total staff of older adult care homes
• 8.8% of total staff of younger adult care homes
• 8.0% of total domiciliary care staff

As of week ending 14 January 2024, the proportions who had received a flu vaccination for the 2023 to 2024 season were:

• 62.7% of total residents and 9.4% of total staff of older adult care homes
• 49.7% of total residents and 8.8% of total staff of younger adult care homes
• 8.5% of total domiciliary care staff

Visiting in care homes

In the week ending 15 January 2024, 99.7% of care homes in England were able to accommodate residents receiving visitors. This figure has been stable since September 2022.

Staff absences due to COVID-19

In the week ending 15 January 2024, 0.2% of care home staff and 0.4% of domiciliary care staff were absent due to COVID-19-related reasons.

These proportions stayed the same for both care home staff and domiciliary care staff in the last month.

Introduction

This is a monthly publication by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) of official statistics on adult social care in England. This statistical bulletin provides an overview on a range of information on social care settings, with a focus on the impact of COVID-19.

This report provides information on:

• uptake of full primary course and autumn 2023 booster doses of COVID-19 vaccinations, and flu vaccinations for the 2023 to 2024 season in adult social care settings at national, regional and local authority level
• visiting in care homes at national, regional and local authority level
• staff absence rates due to COVID-19 in care homes and domiciliary care at national, regional and local authority level

Data used in this publication is taken from Capacity Tracker. Capacity Tracker is a web-based digital insight tool originally developed by NHS England and the Better Care Fund to enable the system to better manage hospital discharges by identifying available capacity in care homes. It enables care homes to share their vacancies in real-time, meaning hospital discharge teams and other health professionals can rapidly search availability throughout England. Since spring 2020, the tool has also been used by DHSC to gather COVID-19-related data to help monitor the sector’s response to the pandemic.

For more information on data sources, the data previously published as part of this report and other published sources of adult social care data, see the background quality and methodology note.

Publication updates

Updates on future reports

The next publication will be released on 7 March 2024. Dates for future publications will be pre-announced on the GOV.UK publication release calendar.

Workforce

Plans to publish a new workforce metric based on Capacity Tracker data have been put on hold. We will give notice if this is to be included in a future publication.

Client level data

NHS England runs the client level data (CLD) collection, which has been mandatory for local authorities since April 2023. The purpose of the collection and ways it can be processed and used are set out in NHS England’s CLD transparency notice.

DHSC is planning to publish some data from this collection in 2024. More information on the collection can be found on the CLD information pages, with the privacy notice outlining how DHSC will process and use the data set out in our CLD privacy notice.

Occupancy

We intend to publish data on care home occupancy, based on Capacity Tracker data, in a future publication.

Digital social care records

We are exploring data sources for estimates of digital social care record (DSCR) uptake and will publish these in a future publication.

COVID-19 and flu vaccination in adult social care settings

How the data can be used

This data can be used for:

• comparing vaccination rates across local authorities and regions in England as self-reported by care providers for:
  • the full primary course and autumn 2023 booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine
  • flu vaccinations for the 2023 to 2024 season
• monitoring vaccination rates over time for:
  • the full primary course and autumn 2023 booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine
  • flu vaccinations for the 2023 to 2024 season
• estimating the size of the adult social care workforce at a given time, using the total staff headcount provided in the accompanying tables, while carefully considering the caveats presented in the background quality and methodology note

This data cannot be used for:

• estimating the number of social care staff or residents who have not been vaccinated
• comparing with vaccination rates in other countries of the UK
• directly comparing vaccination take-up rates between different types of care home staff (directly employed and agency staff)
• estimating the number of vaccinations delivered each day
• monitoring adult social care workforce size trends over time using the total staff headcount provided in the accompanying tables without carefully considering the caveats presented in the background quality and methodology note

The total number of staff and residents for each social care setting as well as the number reported to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and flu are self-reported by the care provider and local authorities. As a result, the rates in this publication refer to the percentage of staff and residents reported to be vaccinated by care providers. This means that the number of individuals who have not received a vaccine cannot be directly derived from the data published in these statistics as the vaccination status of some individuals may be unknown to the care provider.

The dates in this section refer to the dates upon which vaccinations were reported by care providers rather than the dates upon which vaccinations were administered.

Some care providers have reported the total number of staff or residents but not the numbers vaccinated. As a result of this, vaccination rates are affected by response rates and may be underestimated.

Among care home staff, there is a substantial difference in reported vaccination rates for COVID-19 vaccinations between staff directly employed by care homes and staff employed by agencies operating within care homes. This could be due to, for example but not exclusively, different uptake rates, vaccination status not being known to the care provider, or the nature of employment and information available to the care homes.

From 31 July 2022, providers were mandated to complete Capacity Tracker on a monthly basis. Providers are required to update Capacity Tracker with the required data within a designated 7-day reporting window. This window will open at the start of the 8th day of each month and run until the end of the 14th day of each month, or the next working day where the 14th day falls on a weekend or public holiday.

This means that response rates are likely to be higher during the mandation window and may be lower in other weeks of the month. Therefore, weeks that coincide with the mandation window may see a bigger increase in vaccination rates, due to higher response rates in those weeks. These data points are flagged in the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination statistics, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

From 15 July 2023, questions on COVID-19 vaccinations in social care settings became non-mandatory until the seasonal booster campaign began. As such, these figures may not be directly comparable with those from earlier publications. Questions on COVID-19 vaccination in social care settings became mandatory on Capacity Tracker again from the reporting window, which opened on 8 October 2023.

From 9 October 2022, the weekly data points for COVID-19 and flu vaccination refer to weeks ending on a Sunday rather than weeks ending on a Tuesday. This change means that the data point for the week ending 9 October only covers 5 days rather than 7, so there are a lower number of additional vaccinations reported for that data point due to the shorter time period.

For more information, see the background quality and methodology note.

In the accompanying COVID-19 and flu vaccination statistics data tables, the total staff count is provided as the denominator used to calculate the staff vaccination rate. There has been a growing interest in using these statistics to monitor trends in staff headcount over time.

We have investigated the data in more detail to better understand its quality and the underlying drivers of change in staff headcount over time. Our investigation showed that staff headcount trends, as presented in these tables, are driven by multiple factors, including changes in Capacity Tracker response rates over time. This makes it difficult to distinguish between changes in response rates and genuine changes in staff headcounts. As such, we do not recommend that the vaccination rate denominator is used to monitor or estimate changes in staff headcount over time. We will continue to monitor the quality of this data and provide more information here if anything changes.

These caveats do not affect the resident and staff vaccination rates, which are published in the accompanying COVID-19 and flu vaccination statistics data tables. These statistics are internally consistent and can be used to monitor vaccination trends over time.

COVID-19 vaccinations

The NHS started administering vaccinations for COVID-19 in England on 8 December 2020. Social care staff and residents of care homes were prioritised for the vaccine according to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommendation. For more information, see Priority groups for coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination: advice from the JCVI.

On 15 August 2022, the JCVI issued advice and formally launched the COVID-19 autumn 2022 booster vaccination campaign for the following individuals:

• residents in a care home for older adults and staff working in care homes for older adults
• frontline health and social care workers
• all adults aged 50 years and over
• persons aged 5 to 49 years in a clinical risk group, who are household contacts of people with immunosuppression, or who are carers

NHS vaccination teams started visiting care homes to administer the vaccine on 5 September 2022, a week before the formal launch of the campaign.

From 1 September 2022, providers were mandated to submit data on the numbers of residents and staff who have received a full primary course and are no longer asked about first and second doses separately. A full primary course does not include COVID-19 boosters. For most people, a full primary course is defined as 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccination. For a small number of people, however, including people who were vaccinated abroad, people who have received a single-dose vaccination such as Janssen, or people who are severely immunosuppressed, a full primary course may mean a different number of doses.

From 1 September 2022, providers were also encouraged to submit data on individuals who have received their autumn 2022 COVID-19 booster vaccine. An autumn booster is defined as any booster delivered under the autumn booster campaign, which started on 5 September 2022. Data on autumn 2022 boosters is available from week ending 13 September 2022. It became mandatory for providers to submit data on autumn booster vaccinations from the October reporting window. The full timeseries for first and second doses and first and second booster doses of COVID-19 vaccination up to 31 August 2022 (including vaccination in other care settings) can be found in the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination statistics, up to 31 August 2022: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: October 2022 page.

On 21 December 2022, NHS England published additional operational management information to track the number of COVID-19 boosters administered to residents of all adult care homes in England during the 2022 autumn winter campaign - see Tracking autumn boosters for care home residents using operational data (pdf, 364kb) on the NHS supplementary information page. In the NHS England publication, Capacity Tracker is used as a primary data source to estimate the number of autumn boosters administered to residents, but for those care homes without Capacity Tracker data entries, the number of vaccines administered is either collected via a complementary survey or taken from the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS). The NHS England publication therefore presents 2 vaccination rates: one using Capacity Tracker data only and one using a combination of the 3 data sources.

The NHS England publication also presents the percentage of ‘eligible’ residents reported to be vaccinated with an autumn booster. This measure uses the number of residents who have received a full primary vaccination course as the denominator instead of the total number of residents, and is therefore not directly comparable to the vaccination rate presented in these DHSC adult social care in England monthly statistics.

From 22 February 2023, the collection of data on COVID-19 autumn booster vaccinations in social care settings was ceased. These tables were removed from May 2023 onwards, but historical data is still available in prior editions of this publication.

From 29 March 2023, providers were asked to record spring booster vaccinations among care home residents in Capacity Tracker. Previously, data on boosters has been published in this report. Spring boosters were published by NHS England using a new methodology. The last publication of this campaign, Spring boosters for older adult care home residents to 4 July 2023 (xslx, 135kb) can be found on the NHS COVID-19 vaccinations page.

On 26 May 2023, the JCVI issued advice on the COVID-19 autumn 2023 booster vaccination campaign, for the following individuals:

• residents in a care home for older adults
• all adults aged 65 years and over
• persons aged 6 months to 64 years in a clinical risk group, as defined in tables 3 and 4 of the COVID-19 chapter of the Green Book
• frontline health and social care workers
• persons aged 12 to 64 years who are household contacts, as defined in the Green Book, of people with immunosuppression
• persons aged 16 to 64 years who are carers, as defined in the Green Book, and staff working in care homes for older adults

From September 2023, providers were encouraged to submit data on individuals who have received their autumn 2023 COVID-19 booster vaccine. An autumn booster is defined as any booster delivered under the autumn booster campaign, which started on 11 September 2023. Data on autumn 2023 boosters is available from week ending 24 September 2023. It became mandatory for providers to submit data on autumn 2023 booster vaccinations from the October 2023 reporting window.

From November 2023, all COVID-19 vaccination information for care home residents is published by NHS England on the NHS COVID-19 vaccinations page.

COVID-19 vaccinations in older adult care homes

For full response rates, see the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination response rates, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

Residents of older adult care homes

Data on COVID-19 primary course and autumn booster vaccinations among residents in older adult care homes is published by NHS England on the NHS COVID-19 vaccinations page.

Staff of older adult care homes

As of week ending 14 January 2024, in older adult care homes 84.4% of staff have been reported to have received a full primary course and 9.6% have been reported to have received an autumn booster.

COVID-19 vaccinations in younger adult care homes and domiciliary care settings

The following proportions of social care staff and residents have been reported to have received their COVID-19 vaccination doses.

Residents of younger adult care homes

Data on COVID-19 primary course and autumn booster vaccinations for residents of younger adult care homes is published by NHS England on the NHS COVID-19 vaccinations page.

Staff of younger adult care homes

For younger adult care home staff, as of week ending 14 January 2024, 82.8% of staff have been reported to have received a full primary course and 8.8% have been reported to have received an autumn booster.

Domiciliary care staff

For domiciliary care staff, as of week ending 14 January 2024, 77.9% of staff have been reported to have received a full primary course and 8.0% have been reported to have received an autumn booster.

As data is self-reported by care providers, COVID-19 vaccination rates are affected by response rates.

For full response rates, see the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination response rates, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

Flu vaccination in adult social care settings

The national influenza (flu) immunisation programme aims to provide direct protection to those who are at higher risk of influenza associated morbidity and mortality. Groups eligible for NHS influenza vaccination, from 1 September 2023, are based on the advice of the JCVI. More details can be found in the national flu immunisation programme 2023 to 2024 letter.

This year, frontline social care workers, carers and everyone aged 65 years and over are eligible for a flu vaccine. Social care workers who are in direct contact with people who receive care and support services should have the flu vaccine provided by their employer. However, there are circumstances where frontline staff, who are employed by specific social care providers without access to employer led occupational health schemes, can access the vaccine through the NHS free-of-charge.

This report covers cumulative flu vaccination rates for the 2023 to 2024 season in the below adult social care groups:

• residents in older adult care homes
• staff directly employed by older adult care homes
• agency staff working in older adult care homes
• staff directly employed by younger adult care homes
• agency staff working in younger adult care homes
• domiciliary care staff registered to independent CQC providers
• residents of younger adult care homes

Data is self-reported by care providers and local authorities, who may submit their resident and staff numbers but not the number receiving the flu vaccination, resulting in a lower reported percentage vaccinated. An overview of response rates for the numbers vaccinated is provided below.

Data on flu vaccination rates for the 2023 to 2024 season is available from 24 September 2023.

For more information, see the background quality and methodology note.

The proportions of providers that have provided data on the number of staff or residents who received a flu vaccination for the 2023 to 2024 season, as of 14 January 2024 were:

• 99.2% of older adult care home providers
• 98.9% of younger adult care home providers
• 96.5% of domiciliary care providers

For full response rates, see the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination response rates, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

As of week ending 14 January 2024, the proportions of those who had received a flu vaccination in care settings were:

• 62.7% of residents in older adult care homes
• 9.4% of all staff in older adult care homes
• 49.7% of residents in younger adult care homes
• 8.8% of all staff in younger adult care homes
• 8.5% of staff who work in domiciliary care settings

There is regional variation in reported flu vaccination uptake among each of the adult social care groups. The variation is most pronounced among residents of younger adult care homes with 42.2% uptake in the South East and 56.3% uptake in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Figure 1: percentage of residents of older and younger adult care homes who have received their 2023 to 2024 flu vaccine, England, 24 September 2023 to 14 January 2024

Since week ending 24 September 2023, reported 2023 to 2024 flu vaccination rates have increased steadily among residents of older and younger adult care homes. Flu vaccination rates are highest among residents in older adult care home settings.

Source: Capacity Tracker

Figure 2: percentage of staff in older and younger adult care homes and domiciliary care who have received their 2023 to 2024 flu vaccine, England, 24 September 2023 to 14 January 2024

Since week ending 24 September 2023, reported 2023 to 2024 flu vaccination rates have increased steadily among staff in older and younger adult care home and domiciliary care settings. Flu vaccination rates are highest among staff in older adult care home settings.

Source: Capacity Tracker

Notes:

• the timeseries for the proportion of domiciliary care staff who have received the flu vaccine begins on 1 October 2023. This is because the figure for week ending 24 September 2023 has been suppressed to avoid identification
• the proportion of staff receiving flu vaccinations is much lower than the proportion of residents, so attention should be drawn to the y-axis scale

This data can be found in the accompanying ‘COVID-19 and flu vaccination response rates, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page, in addition to data by region and local authority.

Accommodating COVID-safe visitation in care homes

How the data can be used

This data can be used for:

• estimating the number and proportion of care homes that indicate they are accommodating COVID-safe visits within the care homes in line with government guidance
• monitoring trends over time
• comparisons across local authorities and regions in England

This data cannot be used for:

• estimating the number of visitors in care homes and their infection or vaccination status
• comparing with other countries of the UK
• estimating rates of compliance with the mandatory provision of certain data items as set out in the adult social care provider information provisions. Response rates for visiting questions during the reporting window as set out in the adult social care provider information provisions are not equivalent to compliance rates because there may be extenuating circumstances in which a provider has not responded for legitimate reasons

This data is self-reported and is therefore affected by response rates. From August 2022 onwards, any care home that has not submitted data within the mandation window is excluded from the relevant analysis for that month. Prior to August 2022, responses that were not submitted within the 7 days prior were also excluded each week.

Visiting guidance and data trends

There are currently no restrictions on visiting in care homes under normal circumstances where individuals are not symptomatic or have not tested positive. However, during periods of outbreak or when a resident is COVID-positive, visits may need to be limited to one visitor at a time for each resident.

The question on COVID-safe visitation in care homes is still included in the data collection. In July 2022, the question changed from asking care homes whether residents had been allowed visits in the last 7 days to whether residents had been allowed visits in the last month.

Since 31 July 2022, this question is part of the subset of data that providers are mandated to submit on a monthly basis. For more information, see the background quality and methodology note.

The table below summarises the changes in guidance on allowing care home residents to have visitors since December 2020.

Table 1: changes in visiting guidance since December 2020

Date	Guidance
From 3 April 2023	No restrictions on visiting for individuals who are not symptomatic or who have not tested positive under any circumstances
From 31 August 2022	Visitors providing personal care no longer need to test before a visit
From 4 April 2022 to 30 August 2022	No restrictions on visitation in care homes. Every care home resident should have one visitor who can visit in all circumstances (including during periods of isolation and outbreak) Visitors are not required to test before a visit, unless providing personal care Visitors providing personal care do not need to test more than twice a week
From 31 January 2022 to 3 April 2022	No limits on the number of named visitors, with testing and guidance to support safe visiting in place
From 15 December 2021 to 30 January 2022	Residents are permitted to have 3 named visitors for regular visits with testing in place
19 July 2021 to 14 December 2021	No limits on the number of named visitors, with testing and guidance to support safe visiting in place
17 May 2021 to 18 July 2021	Residents are permitted to have 5 named visitors for regular visits with testing in place
12 April 2021 to 16 May 2021	Residents are permitted to have 2 named visitors for regular visits with testing in place
8 March 2021 to 11 April 2021	Residents are permitted to have 1 named visitor for indoor visits with testing in place
6 January 2021 to 7 March 2021	No indoor visits permitted due to the national lockdown
1 December 2020 to 5 January 2021	Indoor visits permitted with testing in place (from 19 December 2020 - no indoor visits permitted in tier 4 areas)

Note: timelines for guidance are accurate as of 1 February 2024.

More information on the current visiting guidance can be found in the acute respiratory infections guidance, which accompanies the infection prevention and control in adult social care settings guidance.

In the week ending 15 January 2024:

• 99.7% of care homes in England were able to accommodate visits in or out of the care home for residents in all circumstances during the last month. This is the same as in the week ending 14 December 2023. This proportion has broadly increased since the end of January 2022, but has shown little variation since September 2022
• a further 0.1% were able to accommodate visits in exceptional circumstances. This is the same as in the week ending 14 December 2023. In October 2023, there was a reduction in the number of care homes reporting that they were only allowing visiting in exceptional circumstances. This was as a result of a data exercise to improve data quality. This figure has broadly declined since April 2022. Exceptional circumstances are individually defined by each care home but are generally thought to be considered when residents are palliative

Regional variation has steadily decreased over the past year as more and more providers are able to accommodate visitation across all regions.

Figure 3: percentage of care homes accommodating or limiting visits for residents, England, 4 January 2022 to 15 January 2024

The proportion of care homes accommodating visiting for residents has broadly increased since mid-January 2022 with the exception of slight decreases in early April 2022 and early July 2022. This number has stabilised since September 2022.

Source: Capacity Tracker

Note: the dotted lines in this chart represent the implementation of the changes in care home visiting guidance or changes to the visiting question in Capacity Tracker:

• A: from 31 January 2022, no limits on the number of named visitors, with testing and guidance to support safe visiting in place
• B: from 4 April 2022, no restrictions on visitation in care homes. Every care home resident should have one visitor who can visit in all circumstances (including during periods of isolation and outbreak)
• C: from 4 July 2022, the visiting questions in Capacity Tracker changed so care homes were asked whether residents had been allowed visits in or out of the care home in the last month, instead of in the last 7 days
• D: from 31 July 2022, providers are mandated to submit data on visiting on a monthly basis. From August 2022 onwards, the data points in this graph are monthly instead of weekly

This data can be found in table 1 of the accompanying ‘Visiting and workforce statistics, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page, in addition to data by region and local authority.

Adult social care workforce

Staff absence rates

How the data can be used

This data can be used for:

• estimating the number and percentage of staff absent because of COVID-19-related reasons
• monitoring trends in COVID-19-related absence rates over time
• comparisons across local authorities and regions in England

This data cannot be used:

• as a sole indicator of all workforce pressures faced by the social care sector, since they only cover COVID-19-related absence
• to directly compare absence rates related to COVID-19 between domiciliary care and care home staff
• for comparing with other countries of the UK
• for linking COVID-19-related absence rates with test positivity rates
• for inferring trends about staff headcounts as these are partly driven by response rates

Absence rates related to COVID-19 are calculated using the reported number of staff employed and the reported number of staff out of work that day because of COVID-19-related reasons. Both the number of total staff employed, and the number of staff absent might be affected by provider response rates as only numbers reported by providers in the last 7 days (or during the mandatory reporting window where this is longer than 7 days) are included in the total counts.

Absence data started to be reported by care providers in Capacity Tracker from December 2020. However, low response rates in the first few months of collection mean that the workforce data is incomplete, which affects the accuracy of the absence data during that period.

Providers who are the least likely to respond are likely to be those experiencing the most pressures on delivery due to high levels of staff absence. For this reason, data from December 2020 to the start of February 2021 for care homes, and from December 2020 to the start of March 2021 for domiciliary care providers, are not presented in this publication.

COVID-19-related absences cannot be directly linked to staff test positivity rates. This is because absences related to COVID-19 can cover a wide range of reasons, including but not restricted to staff:

• testing positive to COVID-19
• self-isolating
• caring for someone who has tested positive to COVID-19
• suffering from illness related to COVID-19

For more information, see the background quality and methodology note.

Absence rate statistics presented in this section were added for the first time in February 2022, following growing general interest in workforce pressures from various sources.

From 31 July 2022, workforce absence data is part of the subset of data that providers are mandated to submit on a monthly basis. Only data submitted during the monthly mandation window are included in these statistics.

COVID-19-related absence rate statistics alone are not sufficient to give a full picture of workforce pressures faced by the sector - however, they may provide some insight on some of the challenges. Additional statistics, such as general absences, retention or recruitment could provide a more complete picture.

In care homes

Data on care home staff absences related to COVID-19 is available from 9 February 2021.

Absence rates in care homes stayed the same over the last month. In the week ending 15 January 2024, 0.2% of care home staff were absent due to COVID-19-related reasons.

Care home staff absence related to COVID-19 reached a peak of 2.9% in the week ending 11 January 2022 and has remained below 1.0% since August 2022.

In the week ending 15 January 2024, there was little regional variation, with COVID-19-related staff absence rates ranging between 0.1% and 0.3% across all regions. Since the week ending 14 December 2023, absence rates remained the same in all regions, with the exception of London, the North East and the South West, where absence rates increased from 0.1% to 0.2%, 0.1% to 0.2% and 0.2% to 0.3% respectively, and Yorkshire and the Humber, where absence rates decreased from 0.2% to 0.1%.

Data on absences and response rates can be found in tables 2 and 5, respectively, of the accompanying ‘Visiting and workforce statistics, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

In domiciliary care

Data on domiciliary care staff COVID-19-related absences is available from 2 March 2021. Absence rates in domiciliary care settings are not directly comparable with those in residential care homes.

Absence rates in domiciliary care stayed the same over the last month. In the week ending 15 January 2024, 0.4% of domiciliary care staff were absent due to COVID-19 reasons.

In the week ending 15 January 2024, there was some regional variation, with regions reporting absence rates between 0.2% and 0.5%. Since the week ending 14 December 2023, absence rates decreased in all regions, with the exception of the North West, the South West, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber, where absence rates increased from 0.3% to 0.4%, 0.4% to 0.5%, 0.3% to 0.4% and 0.4% to 0.5% respectively.

Data on absences and response rates can be found in tables 3 and 6 of the accompanying ‘Visiting and workforce statistics February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page.

Figure 4: percentage of staff absent due to COVID-19-related reasons, England, 4 January 2022 to 15 January 2024

Since the peak of 2.9% in January 2022, there have been 2 further spikes in care home staff absence rates, in late March 2022 and mid July 2022. For domiciliary care absence, following a peak of 4.8% in January 2022, there have been a further 3 spikes, in late March 2022, mid July 2022 and mid October 2022. From November 2022 to April 2023, absence rates due to COVID-19-related reasons remained broadly stable in both care homes and domiciliary care settings, and decreased between April and June 2023. Since June 2023, absence rates have remained the same among care home staff. Between June and October 2023, absence rates broadly increased among domiciliary care staff and decreased in November 2023. Since November 2023, absence rates among domiciliary care staff have remained the same.

Source: Capacity Tracker

Notes:

• the proportion of staff absent due to COVID-19-related reasons is not comparable across care settings
• the dotted line in these charts represents the move to monthly reporting after the start of the mandatory data provision implemented on 31 July 2022. From August 2022 onwards, the data points in these graphs are monthly instead of weekly

This data can be found in tables 2 and 3 of the accompanying ‘Visiting and workforce statistics, February 2024: data tables’ on the Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: February 2024 page, in addition to data by region and local authority.

Terminology

Care home

Facilities providing residential care. The data in this bulletin refers to CQC-registered care homes.

Older adult care homes

Care homes serving any older people (aged 65 and over) as identified from the latest CQC data on care homes in the ‘older people service’ user band. A small number of residents within care homes serving older people may be aged under 65.

Younger adult care homes

Care homes not serving any older people (aged 65 and over) as identified from the latest CQC data on care homes in the ‘older people service’ user band.

Domiciliary care

Services providing personal care for people living in their own homes. The data in this bulletin refers to domiciliary staff employed by independent CQC-registered providers.

Staff

Unless specified, staff can refer to staff directly employed by a provider and/or through an agency.

About this data

These statistics are being published as a part of a wider landscape of statistics on adult social care. The Government Statistical Service (GSS) compiles a UK adult social care database of official statistics on adult social care across the 4 nations of the UK. This is updated on a monthly basis.

The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) conducted a review of adult social care statistics in England, which called for:

• better leadership and collaboration across different organisations publishing official statistics. This publication has been produced in collaboration with other statistics providers of COVID-19 adult social care data and DHSC will endeavour to work with various stakeholders as more data is published through this publication
• addressing of gaps in available data, particularly in privately funded care. This bulletin aims to plug some of that gap by including data on residents privately funding their care in addition to those funded by local authorities
• improving existing official statistics. These statistics are badged as official statistics and more data will be added iteratively based on user needs

Data sources

Data on visiting in care homes, staff absence and vaccinations is taken from self-reported data submitted by care providers in England through a data collection and insight tool called Capacity Tracker. From 31 July 2022, this data is part of the subset of data that providers are mandated to submit on a monthly basis.

More detailed information about data sources can be found in the background quality and methodology note. This document also includes detailed information on:

• data coverage
• data quality
• relevance
• accuracy and reliability
• timeliness and punctuality
• comparability and coherence
• accessibility and clarity
• cost and burden

Revisions

Any revisions to past publications will be in line with DHSC’s revision policy and highlighted in future publications accordingly.