Around one in three care home residents in England were self-funded between August 2019 to February 2020, according to experimental data published for the first time by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS's Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England: 2019 to 2020 study estimates 84.7 per cent (391,927 of 462,460) of care home beds were occupied in England.
Of those, there were approximately 143,774 (36.7 per cent) self-funded care home residents, compared with 248,153 (63.3 per cent) state-funded care home residents.
South-east England had the highest proportion of self-funders (45.4 per cent) compared with the north-east, which had the lowest (24.6 per cent).
Care homes located in the least deprived areas had a statistically significantly higher proportion of self-funders (53.8 per cent) than care homes in the most deprived areas (21.6 per cent).
Smaller care homes, with 1 to 19 beds, had the lowest proportion of self-funders (15.1 per cent), which the ONS said is statistically significantly lower than all other care home sizes.
Care homes providing care for the over-65s had the highest proportion of self-funders (49.6 per cent); this was statistically significantly higher than care homes providing care for younger adults which had the lowest proportion of self-funders (4.8 per cent).
The majority of self-funders are resident in care homes providing care for dementia (75 per cent) and the majority of all care home residents are in such homes (70.2 per cent).
It is the first time the ONS has published figures on self-funders in care homes, and will provide a pre-pandemic baseline for research.
“Today’s findings from experimental research show that in England, around 37 per cent of care home residents paid towards the cost of their care, compared with 63 per cent who were state funded,” said ONS deputy director of health and life events Julie Stanborough.
“However, we saw geographic differences, with more residents self-funding their care in the South East,” she added.
