Could you please advise how many people are there who receive some form of care package from yourselves that suffer from Epilepsy either as their main client category or as a minor category?
We have interpreted this request to refer to both adults and children’s social care.
Children may receive a care package for a single reason or for multiple reasons. Epilepsy as a factor is not recorded separately and cannot be reported on separately. Free text parts of hundreds of cases would have to be examined manually to identify if epilepsy was a factor in taking a child in care and even if each one only took ten minutes the time necessary would be in excess of eighteen hours and is therefore exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000 – Cost of Compliance.
The same applies to adults who may receive a care package – information about a diagnosis of epilepsy is not held in a way that would allow a total to be produced within the 18 hour limit. Information on a diagnosis of epilepsy may or may not be held in the text of an individual client assessment, again the numbers of assessments that would have to be manually checked would take the total time required to well in excess of 18 hours. Categorisations of primary support reasons are made at a higher level ,such as mental health or learning disability, in line with national guidance.