The research in this discussion paper contributes to the Fraser of Allander Institute’s programme of work focusing on the social care sector in Scotland.
It is a continuation of our work related to modelling social care demand, with our previous report providing an approach for estimating the future number of people with learning disabilities drawing on social care services in Scotland.
This work comes within the context of wider social care reform, partly stemming from the decision not to implement a national care service in Scotland and the newly legislated Care Reform Act (2025). As part of this act, the Scottish Government have specific reporting requirements on projected social care needs in Scotland, to be published at the end of 2026 and every five years thereafter.
Long-term projections of demand for care services, and the associated expenditure, are fundamental to any reforms of the social care sector, to ensure reforms are evidence-based. A model for projecting future demand and expenditure is available for England and Wales, developed and maintained by the Care Policy Evaluation Centre (CPEC) at the London School of Economics.
This discussion paper is, therefore, two-fold. The first part seeks to explore the feasibility of replicating CPEC’s long term care projection model in Scotland. The second part provides an approach for replicating their methodology with the constraints of the available data to project the future number of older people drawing on social care services in Scotland.
Authors
Ben is an Economist Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute working across a number of projects areas. He has a Masters in Economics from the University of Edinburgh, and a degree in Economics from the University of Strathclyde.
His expertise lies in various economic modelling approaches, social care, and evaluating social impact for organisations across the private, public and third sector, particularly where evaluation requires intuitive approaches.
Spencer is a Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute.