What Is Social Work Without Accommodation in ISIC Rev. 5?

Social work without accommodation in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, covers social work activities provided without providing accommodation. This includes visiting and day services, counselling, support for families, older people, people with disabilities and other groups, and community services that help people live independently. The service is delivered in a person’s home, in a day centre or in the community, and the person returns to their own home rather than living in the provider’s facility.

Support that ends with the person going home

The defining image for this scope is a door closing behind a person who is returning to their own home. Social work without accommodation covers social work activities provided without providing accommodation: visiting and day services, counselling, support for families, older people, people with disabilities and other groups, and community services that help people live independently. The service is delivered in a person’s home, in a day centre or in the community, and the person returns to their own home rather than living in the provider’s facility. That return journey is not a detail. It is the test that separates this scope from residential care, where the provider houses the person, and from accommodation services, where the provider sells a bed for the night.

The kinds of support inside the scope

• Social work for older people and people with disabilities, without accommodation, including visiting support and help with daily living
• Child day care and related social services without accommodation, where children attend by day and return home
• Counselling, guidance and family support services, provided through sessions and ongoing contact
• Community and day services that support independent living, including activities and support in day centres and community settings

A service that visits older people at home, helps with meals and personal care, and checks on their wellbeing shows the visiting strand: the home remains the person’s own, the visitor comes and goes, and the support is fitted around the person’s existing life. A day centre where people with disabilities spend the day in activities and support, returning home in the evening, shows the day strand: structure, company and assistance during the day, without residence. Counselling and family support show a third shape, where the service is conversation, guidance and practical help over time, rather than a place or a physical task. Child day care without accommodation shows a fourth, where the day setting supports families while children remain living at home. None of these provides a place to live, which is why Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, separates them from residential care.

What the scope is not, even when the people served overlap

Residential care, where accommodation is provided with care, is the closest neighbour and the easiest to confuse, because the same population may need either form of support at different times. Hospital or medical treatment as health care is separate, because the service is clinical treatment, not social support. Education services, including early childhood education, are separate, because the service is a programme of teaching, even when it happens in a day setting that looks like care. Accommodation services such as hotels are separate, because the service is lodging, not support for independent living. In each case, the overlap is in the people, not in the work: older people, children and people with disabilities appear in many sections, and the entry is chosen by the service provided to them, not the group they belong to.

Why community based care needs its own numbers

Community based care is a major policy direction, as countries seek to support people at home rather than in institutions. Separate statistics for social work without accommodation let analysts track that shift, measure home and day services, and compare them with residential provision, instead of reporting one undifferentiated care total. Without that separation, a country moving support from institutions to homes would look as if care were shrinking, because beds would fall while visits rose, and the two movements would cancel out in a single total. With separation, the shift itself becomes visible: home visits rising, day attendance changing, residential places moving in a different direction, and funding following the pattern rather than the aggregate. Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, contains 22 sections from A to V, with 87 divisions, 258 groups and 463 classes in total. Before using any code, open the UNSD classification detail page and the Rev. 5 publication, follow the divisions, groups and classes downward until the wording matches the activity in full, and check in particular whether accommodation is provided: if the person lives in the provider’s facility, the activity is not in this scope.

This guide is statistical classification only, and it leaves any particular service’s code, principal activity and registration undecided. The office that should decide those questions is the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record for that service, and it should be consulted before a code is used in a return.