Assessment, Performance Measurement and User Satisfaction in Older People’s Services

assessment not only as a central component from which to design appropriate services to meet the needs of older people at the professional level, but also as vital to national policies aiming to promote more efficient and effective care. Assessment:continued problems requiring ‘large solutions’? Since the community care reforms of the late 1990s, assessment has been viewed as an important tool for policy makers to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in community care services. The assessment process continues to provide examples of problems, both in the way information is collected from older people and in the use of such information. Difficulties around information sharing between different professionals and omissions of important need domains in community care assessments have prompted policy makers to consider major changes to the assessment process (Challis, 1999; Stewart et al., 1999). One recent policy has been the Single Assessment Process (SAP), formally introduced in England from April 2004, which PSSRU Manchester is evaluating