Summary
The Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) has been published annually since 2010-11, and draws on data from a number of collections. The ASCOF Handbook of Definitions, published by the Department of Health, provides in-depth information on the purpose of the framework, the construction of the constituent measures, and context for their interpretation. The ASCOF is used both locally and nationally to set priorities for care and support, measure progress and strengthen transparency and accountability. The purpose of the ASCOF is three-fold:
- Locally, the ASCOF supports councils to improve the quality of care and support. By providing robust, nationally comparable information on the outcomes and experiences of local people, the ASCOF supports meaningful comparisons between councils, helping to identify priorities for local improvement and stimulating the sharing of learning and best practice.
- The ASCOF fosters greater transparency in the delivery of adult social care, supporting local people to hold their council to account for the quality of the services they provide. A key mechanism for this is through councils' local accounts, where the ASCOF is already being used as a robust evidence base to support councils' reporting of their progress and priorities to local people.
- Nationally, the ASCOF measures the performance of the adult social care system as a whole and its success in delivering high-quality, personalised care and support. The framework will support Ministers in discharging their accountability to the public and Parliament for the adult social care system and will inform and support national policy development.
The ASCOF encompasses four domains. These are:
- Enhancing quality of life for people with care and support needs.
- Delaying and reducing the need for care and support.
- Ensuring people have a positive experience of care and support.
- Safeguarding adults whose circumstances make them vulnerable and protecting from avoidable harm.
This report provides the findings from the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. It is based on final data and supersedes the provisional ASCOF release in July 2014.
A number of ASCOF measures are commented on in this executive summary, and a summary of findings is shown in Chapter 2. Council level data, along with regional totals and totals for council types, for 2013-14, 2012-13 and 2011-12 are available on the website of the Health and Social Care Information Centre and through the National Adult Social Care Intelligence Service (NASCIS). The latest ASCOF data can also be found on the HSCIC ASCOF website, link below.
2013-14 is the first year to include measure 1I (proportion of people who use services and their carers who reported that they had as much social contact as they would like). Data underpinning this measure have been published for years prior to 2013-14 in the Adult Social Care Survey and Carers' Survey publications.
Please note: on 14 January 2015 the 'Time-series of aggregated outcome measures' annex for this publication has been replaced in order to correct the 'Base' column headings for Measure 1B. The HSCIC would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.
ASCOF Indicator 1J
The existing ASCOF Indicator 1A (Social Care related Quality of Life) tells us about the current (care-related) quality of life of people using social care. Following discussions in 2011 at the Outcomes and Information Development Board (OIDB), it was agreed that the Department of Health would commission a research project from the Quality and Outcomes of Person Centred Care Policy Research Unit (QORU) to develop a 'value added' measure of social care-related quality of life. This indicator, to be known as ASCOF Indicator 1J, will form part of the 2016-17 framework to be published shortly by the Department of Health.
The summary paper provided below (IIASC Report Summary 2013-14) therefore seeks to describe: the background, methods and results of the QORU study which produced the calculation needed in constructing this new indicator; the application of this calculation to existing data flows to derive aggregate local authority-level data; and the interpretation of these individual and aggregate measures, again drawing on the QORU study. Additionally, local authority-level data (based on the 2013-14 Adult Social Care Survey submissions) are provided in the accompanying dataset (IIASC Dataset 2013-14) and it is envisaged that similar datasets will be made available in due course to cover 2014-15 and 2015-16.
For further details, QORU's papers detailing the conclusions of the research and development phase of their work can be found via the 'Related links' section below. Any queries or comments should be directed to [email protected] in the first instance.
Key Facts
- The measure of social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) gives an average quality of life score based on the responses to eight questions in the Personal Social Services Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS). In 2013-14, the average SCRQoL score for England was 19.0, compared to 18.8 in 2012-13 and 18.7 in both 2011-12[5] and 2010-11. 76.8 per cent of service users reported they had as much control as they wanted or adequate control over their daily lives, an increase from 76.1 per cent in 2012-13. In 2013-14 the proportion of people who said they were extremely or very satisfied with their care and support was 64.8 per cent, an increase from 64.1 in 2012-13 (measures 1A, 1B and 3A).
- The proportion of people using social care who receive self-directed[6] support continued to increase: from 29.2 per cent in 2010-11 to 43.0 per cent in 2011-12 to 56.2 per cent in 2012-13 and to 61.9 per cent in 2013-14. The proportion of people using social care who receive direct payments has increased each year, in 2013-14 this was 19.1 per cent compared to 16.8 per cent in 2012-13, 13.7 per cent in 2011-12 and 11.7 per cent in 2010-11 (measures 1C(1) and 1C(2))
- In 2013-14, the proportion of adults with a learning disability in paid employment had decreased to 6.7 per cent from 7.0 per cent in 2012-13 and 7.1 per cent in 2011-12. The proportion of adults with a learning disability who live in their own home or with their family has continued to increase; for 2013-14 it was 74.9 per cent compared to 73.5 per cent in 2012-13 and 70.0 per cent in 2011-12 (measures 1E and 1G). In 2013-14, 44.5 per cent of people who used services reported that they had as much social contact as they would like, compared to 43.2 per cent in 2012-13, 42.3 per cent in 2011-12[5] and 41.9 per cent in 2010-11 (measure 1I(1)).
- The number of permanent admissions to residential and nursing care homes for both younger and older adults per 100,000 population has reduced in 2013-14, compared to the previous year. For younger adults there were 14.4 permanent admissions per 100,000 population, compared to 15.0 in 2012-13. For older adults there were 650.6 permanent admissions per 100,000 population compared to 697.2 in 2012-13 (measure 2A(1) and 2A(2)).
- In 2013-14, 66.0 per cent of people who used services felt as safe as they wanted, an increase from 65.1 per cent in 2012-13. The proportion of people who used services who said that those services have made them feel safe and secure was 79.1 per cent in 2013-14, an increase from 78.1 per cent in 2012-13 and 75.5 per cent in 2011-12[5] (measures 4A and 4B).
Footnotes
5. It should be noted that stratified sampling was introduced for the 2011-12 survey and there was also a change to the way in which councils were required to check that a service user had the capacity to take part in the survey. Therefore, care should be taken when comparing 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 data with data from 2010-11.
6. To be counted as receiving self-directed support, the person (adult, older person or carer) must either: be in receipt of a direct payment; or have in place a personal budget which meets all the following criteria: 1. The person (or their representative) has been informed about a clear, upfront allocation of funding, enabling them to plan their support arrangements; and 2. There is an agreed support plan making clear what outcomes are to be achieved with the funding; and 3. The person (or their representative) can use the funding in ways and at times of their choosing.
Last edited: 30 August 2019 3:36 pm