Measuring outcomes of social care

We summarise interim findings from the initial development stage of the Outcomes of Social Care for Adults (OSCA) project, which is developing a gold standard preference weighted measure of social care outcome. The project is building on previous work, including the Adult Social Care Outcome Toolkit (ASCOT) which is designed to capture information about an individual’s social care-related quality of life (SCRQOL). The aim is for the measure to be applicable across as wide a range of user groups and care and support settings as possible. Analysis of datasets that have used ASCOT in previous projects identified the domains of occupation, social participation and involvement, and safety as areas for improvement. Conceptual work also identified the need to add a domain reflecting ‘dignity ’-the impact of the way services and support affected people’s sense of personal worth. Cognitive testing with 29 service users confirmed the relevance and scope of the domains and that the final wording reflected the intended meaning. The next steps are to test the psychometric properties of the measure with a sample of service users. The measure is being proposed to be included in the planned user experience survey to cover all service user groups from 2011