Employee Assistance Programme

Online GP services, Counselling, wellbeing tools and access to retail discounts. Find out more. 

Employee Assistance Programme

Care Market Offers

Explore a range of offers from our Procurement Support Programme

Care Market Offers
Essex County Council - Provider Hub
Skip to content
Text size:

Essex is one of the largest counties in England with a population of nearly 1.5 million, and which is growing by around 10,000 people every year.

According to Office of National Statistics the population of Essex people aged 65+ was 324,400 in 2023, which equates to 22% of total Essex population, and the estimates indicate this group will increase by an additional 7% by 2035 to approximately 331,900 people.

Essex population of people aged 65+ is slightly higher than England average which is 18.6%, and across the nation 11% of adults 65+ are still in employment.

The working age adult population is 59% of the whole Essex population, and by 2035 it is estimated to be 900,300 which is an increase of only 4% compared to 2020.

Our 85+ population will grow by an additional 22,200 adults in the next 15 years, and we know from previous research that this group of people tend to require more care with much more complex needs.

The level of growth will present challenges in respect of expanding public service infrastructure to support a larger population. Importantly for Adult Social Care the key challenge will be in meeting the care needs of an older population that is expected to grow at a faster rate than the working age group and placing greater demand on care and support services.

Essex County Council is supporting 16,542 adults through a variety of social care funded services, over the last 3 years we have seen a drop in nursing and residential care as the sector navigates its way through the continually changing landscape of the pandemic. This has meant that as we work through the fallout of the pandemic, we have been dealing with a backlog of unmet care needs.

20% of total Essex population of adults 65+ are receiving social care services, and we are supporting proportionally more woman than the general population. (51.1%)

Female Male
58.8% 41.2%

The amount of people we provide services to by ethnicity is in proportion to the wider population of the county. (94% White and 4% BAME)

White BAME
94.0% 3.6%

The below table showing Essex supported adults by their primary support reasons:

Primary Support Reason Number of Adults
Physical Support 9,111
Learning Disability Support 3,760
Support with memory and cognition 1,131
Mental Health support 1,016
Sensory Support 250
Social support 204
Other 278

In Essex we supported 11,148 people through reablement services to help them regain their independence and 71% of adults following reablement no longer require services.

We have 48,745 unique known carers, currently we have 1,262 carers with open services and during the last 12 months 539 carers have received direct payments. In the last year we have provided carer services to 212 carers either through carers support or carers break.

Dementia prevalence is known to increase with age, the most recent figures from NHS Digital (February 2023) highlight that there are 24,291 people (over 65) in Southend, Essex & Thurrock (SET) living with dementia, with a 33% increase predicted, resulting in 32,307 people by 2030.

 

Source: Adults Carers Dashboard.

Data from national statistics shows that adults that fund their own care pay 41% than people receive funded services through local authority, and 25% of the self-funders will become eligible for local authority support because their funds will be depleted.

The table showing the scale of self-funder across the nation.

Region Percentage of self-funders
England 37.0%
North-East 26.4%
Yorkshire and the Humber 32.7%
East Midlands 37.2%
West Midlands 36.4%
East of England 40.0%
Greater London 28.0%
South-East 47.5%
South-West 41.5%

 

The scale of the unpaid carers is growing very fast, and over the past 3 years has escalated enormously. From the previous census data, we know that 1 in 8 people in England are an unpaid carer, and for Essex it shows that approximately 124,000 people are unpaid carer, which is 12% of the Essex population.

We know from the point of admission to residential care 48% of older people said that an informal carer was unable to continue the care, and this equating to around 600 older people each year.

Last updated: 31/03/2024
Next Locality Based Demographics