FOI Request - Care Waiting Times

Request 101003951602

Please provide the following information for each of 2024/25 and 2025/26 to date:

1.  The median time (in days) taken to assess a referral made to adult social services for an assessment of needs. Please include new referrals as well as re-assessment of existing clients. 

2. The single longest wait (in days) taken to assess an individual after a referral to adult social services. Please include new referrals as well as reassessments. This should include any support package, whether delivered directly by social services or commissioned by them in any other way. 

3. The median time (in days) taken between the completion of assessment and the start of a service identified within their care and support. Please include new referrals as well as re-assessment of existing clients.  

4. The single longest wait (in days) between the completion of assessment and the start of a service identified within their care and support. This should include any support package, whether delivered directly by social services or commissioned by them in any other way. 

5. The number of people who have died awaiting the start of an initial package of social care in 2025/26.  

Response 26-03-2026

Please note, many factors can result in delays to the assessment, and then on to actually receiving the full package of care as defined in that assessment. 

It is highly likely that those that were waiting very long times were all within the health and social care system, either in hospital, receiving some form of partial or interim care or even going through reablement. For the figures for Question  3 and 4, the clock starts from the moment their package is identified and only stops when the full package is fulfilled. This does not mean that someone spent over 800 days with no care; the cases that were sampled at the higher end all had engagement from social workers, care homes and NHS services almost constantly in that time and just did not have their full package possible in that time period. Finally, the way systems record such data may differ considerably from one Partnership to another, and factors such as when a referral starts and ends, when an assessment begins and ends and even when a service starts are all up for interpretation.