Older adults are the largest age group using publicly arranged adult social care in England, but their needs are not limited to personal care. Official statistics cover demand, assessments, long-term support, safety, mobility, social connection, information and the cost of additional help. The figures below refer to specific periods and measures, so they should not be treated as one combined count.
Contents
- Demand and assessment
- Scale and age distribution
- Where support is delivered
- Outcomes, safety and quality of life
- Daily living, health and access
- Social connection, information and costs
Demand and assessment
Older people accounted for 68% of requests for local-authority-funded social-care support in England in 2023/24. The Care Quality Commission’s The state of health care and adult social care in England 2024/25 also reported that new adult social-care requests were 4% higher in 2023/24 than in 2022/23 and 8% higher than in 2019/20.
The change looks different when expressed as a population rate. The rate of requests from older people per 100,000 population was less than 1% higher in 2023/24 than in 2019/20. That distinction matters: the number of requests can rise while the rate changes only slightly.
Not every request results in the same type of intervention. About 26% of new support requests from people aged 65 and over were met with long-term care or independence-maximising short-term care in 2023/24, according to the same CQC source. This measure describes the outcome for new requests, not the proportion of all older people who need care.
More recent monthly activity gives another view of entry into support. From April to December 2024, 422,000 people in England received an adult-social-care assessment without having received local-authority long-term support in the previous 12 months. Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: April 2025 recorded 289,000 people aged 65 and over among those new-to-support assessments. Within that older group, 118,000 were aged 75 to 84.
The monthly release is official statistics in development. Its counts are rounded and exclude the Isles of Scilly and, for the cited release, Warwickshire. The assessment figures therefore provide a time-bounded picture of activity rather than a complete estimate of every unmet need.
Scale and age distribution
At 31 December 2024, 666,000 people in England were receiving local-authority-arranged or provided long-term adult social-care support. The same monthly statistics show that the total rose from 646,000 on 31 January 2024 to 666,000 on 31 December 2024.
People aged 65 and over made up 391,000 of those receiving long-term support on 31 December 2024. The age-specific rates show why older adulthood is not one uniform category:
| Age group or measure | Long-term-support rate per 100,000 | Period |
|---|---|---|
| People aged 65 and over | 3,630 | 31 December 2024 |
| People aged 65 to 74 | 1,570 | 31 December 2024 |
| People aged 75 to 84 | 3,640 | 31 December 2024 |
| People aged 85 and over | 11,000 | 31 December 2024 |
These rates come from Adult social care in England, monthly statistics: April 2025. They describe people receiving long-term support at a stated date, not everyone who had an assessment or received a service at any point during the year. The rate was 1,570 per 100,000 for ages 65 to 74, 3,640 for ages 75 to 84 and 11,000 for ages 85 and over.
An annual measure captures a wider period. In 2023/24, 858,720 clients received some adult social-care support during the year in England, according to NHS England’s Long term care - Adult Social Care Activity and Finance Report, England, 2023-24. This annual client count should not be added to the 666,000 point-in-time total: the two statistics use different time windows and describe different stages of activity.
Where support is delivered
The 2024-25 Adult Social Care Survey describes eligible adult social-care service users aged 18 and over. The age-specific figures below concern survey users aged 65 and over, rather than all older adults in England. According to the Personal social services ASCS report, England: 2024 to 2025, 62.7% received care in a community setting, 25.1% received support in a residential setting and 12.1% received support in a nursing setting.
The setting varies with the type of need. Among service users receiving support with memory and cognition, 42.1% were in residential care, 20.6% were in nursing care and 37.2% were supported in the community in 2024-25. For physical support, 72.9% were supported in the community. For social support, the community figure was 87.9%.
These percentages describe the distribution of surveyed service users by support setting and need. They do not show that one setting is appropriate for every person with a particular condition, and they should not be interpreted as a forecast of future placement requirements.
Outcomes, safety and quality of life
The 2024-25 survey provides several measures of how service users viewed their care and support. Overall, 65.1% were very or extremely satisfied, while 2.1% were very or extremely dissatisfied. Satisfaction is a survey response and does not by itself measure the availability or intensity of services.
Quality-of-life responses were also mixed. In 2024-25, 31.8% rated their quality of life as very good or so good it could not be better. At the other end of the scale, 3.7% rated it as very bad or so bad it could not be worse. A much larger 91.1% said care and support services helped them have a better quality of life.
Safety and control show additional dimensions of support:
- 70.1% felt as safe as they wanted to feel.
- 1.9% said they did not feel safe at all.
- 87.8% said their support services helped them feel safe.
- 34.4% felt they had as much control over daily life as they wanted.
The gap between these measures is informative without requiring an assumption about cause. Feeling helped by services, feeling safe, and feeling in control are separate survey questions. The Personal social services ASCS report, England: 2024 to 2025 reports them as weighted survey estimates.
Daily living, health and access
Mobility inside and outside the home remains a central part of older adults’ support needs. In 2024-25, 52.0% of service users said they could usually get around indoors, excluding steps, by themselves. A further 23.4% said they could not do so by themselves.
The home environment was not equally suitable for everyone. Some 54.7% felt their home met their needs very well, while 3.4% felt their home was totally inappropriate for their needs. These measures describe people’s perceptions of their home in relation to their needs, not an inspection rating.
Access beyond the home was more limited in the survey. Only 29.7% said they could get to all the places in their local area that they wanted to reach, and 27.8% reported that they never left their home. The figures relate to 2024-25 service users and should not be generalized to the entire older population.
Health and pain responses add context to these access statistics. In 2024-25, 14.3% rated their general health as very good, while 4.9% rated it as very bad. On the survey day, 37.1% reported no pain or discomfort. Together, these results describe a population with widely varying health, mobility and participation experiences.
Social connection, information and costs
Social contact was another area where many service users reported constraints. In 2024-25, 45.4% felt they had as much social contact as they wanted with people they liked. Meanwhile, 6.8% had little social contact and felt socially isolated, and 11.4% felt often or always lonely.
Information is not necessarily sought by everyone who could benefit from it. During the previous year, 41.1% had never tried to find information or advice about support and services. Among those who had tried, 29.9% found information very easy to find and 12.1% found it very difficult.
The survey also recorded direct spending on additional care and support. In 2024-25, 28.2% of service users used their own money to buy more care and support. Family members paid for more care and support for 10.1% of service users.
These cost figures do not state how much was paid, and they do not establish why additional support was purchased. They show the share of surveyed service users reporting those arrangements during the survey period. Taken alongside the information and social-connection measures, they indicate that social care needs can involve practical assistance, safety, mobility, relationships, navigation of services and financial resources at the same time.