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Developments in personal social services statistics
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Last modified date:8 February 2007
The main developments affecting or likely to affect the information collected on the central returns in respect of PSS provision.
General issues
A New Approach to Social Services Performance
This sets out a new approach to assessing and managing social services performance in response to the Government's new agenda for social services as described in the White Paper "Modernising Social Services"
. It describes the new performance management framework for Best Value in Social Services, describing both the local and national roles in the process of improving performance, including two new components to the framework for 1999-2000:
- a new role for the Social Services Inspectorate Regional Offices
- a new Performance Assessment Framework to bring together performance indicators to be used to monitor social services performance.
Information for Health" - an Information Strategy for the Modern NHS 1998-2005
This sets out principles for electronic patient and health care records, and makes fundamental proposals for data sharing within NHS using core national products and standards - eg NHSNet, NHS Number. This raises (amongst others) the question of whether a set of headings can be agreed under which the content of a personal health record can be arranged and which can then be used in communication across health disciplines, and between health and other sectors, such as social services. General principles and guidance is currently being worked on by the Department's Data Sharing Working Group.
Mental Health
Work has been moving ahead in NHS on devising the items in the Mental Health Minimum Dataset, based on trials in a number of sites. We will be seeking to extend this work to cover Social Services Mental health provision, linked to the Mental Health National Service Framework. We will be seeking help and advice from areas which have experience of joint working in this area.
New collections on workload and performance of registration and inspection units
The forms for the 1998-99 survey of registration and inspection unit staffing and workload have now been circulated for completion by end May 1999. The survey covers Inspection units both in Local Authorities and in the NHS.
NHSNet
DH is looking into the possibility of Local Authorities having access to NHSNet. We hope to be able to confirm the position on this very soon.
Likely statistical implications of "joined up"
working for the whole range of PSS statistics
Services for children
Children in need
Very little information (either from central activity returns or financial ones) is available on children in need. It is thought that expenditure on children in need (who are not formally looked after) is at least 30% of all expenditure, and probably more, on services for children. This would imply that expenditure on services for children in need not looked after was of the order of £900m in England in 1997-98, about £6m per authority. The lack of central information for this important area of Social Services provision is one of the most glaring gaps in PSS information currently.
In December 1998, the Children in Need Working Group, consisting of DH members and representatives from Cheshire, Stafford and Tameside organized a pilot exercise in about 25 authorities of a database system which enables Local Authorities to collate information on children in need, in terms of numbers of children seen, their need category, the amount of contact hours with professional staff and expenditure incurred by the Local Authority.
The pilot exercise seemed to go very well - there was a debrief of pilot authorities in March 1999. As a result we are now intending to go live with data collection on Children In Need for ALL authorities in February 2000. The final roll out of the system and the accompanying guidance will be made in September 1999.
Costing of services for children in need
In parallel with the work of the children in need exercise, DH has commissioned research into the ways in which childrens services should be costed for. Jenni Beecham from PSSRU will be taking this work forward - the "first stage"
- over the next six months. As part of the work, we will be looking at the current position in a small group of "volunteer"
authorities to see what variation there is in practice in LA accounting practices and handling of invoices and charging for services. This will help us assess how much change might be needed to put these costings on the right "conceptual"
basis. There is a similar costings exercise for the RAP project.
Outcome indicators for looked after children and care leavers
Statistical collections are being planned to support the policy initiatives recently announced under Quality Protects:
- Outcome indicators
A pilot exercise in 1998 identified the most useful and reliable indicators of outcomes for looked after children. The full collection from all authorities is to be introduced from 1 October 1999; the indicators include a number relating to educational attainment and school attendance, an indicator on offending rates, and a series of indicators of the health care received by these children. - Care leavers
In parallel with the outcome indicators collection a new child based collection has been set up to collect data on educational qualifications of young people leaving care aged 16 or over. This will provide data to enable the Department to assess progress towards one of its key targets for children's social services. It will also enable educational outcome data to be linked to data on the care histories of these children to permit further analysis. This collection has been introduced with effect from 1 April 1999.In addition, local authorities are asked to provide data about the occupation and accommodation of their care leavers after they have left care. Starting in April 1999 this scheme will require authorities to keep in touch with young people leaving care aged 16 and provide data when they reach 19 years old. Data collection will begin in 2001-02.
Changes to the current looked after children collection
Major changes are being introduced to the existing collection of data on looked after children to streamline and speed-up the process of data collection and dissemination.
- Introduction of the one third sample and the new aggregate CLA100 return
For year ending 31 March 1998 authorities were asked to complete a new aggregate statistical return (the CLA100) to provide basic headline data for rapid publication. At the same time the detailed child level return (SSDA903) was reduced to a one third sample to reduce the burdens of data processing and error correction. The sample will provide a detailed annual analysis of the looked after population, which will be used together with the total figures provided on the CLA100 to estimate the full national picture. - Review and simplification of the coding on the SSDA903
As a result of a major consultation exercise, there will be significant improvement and simplification of the detailed categories used for data collection about looked after children. The results of the consultation will be issued to all local authorities in late spring covering hopefully all of the codes in question, thought the need codes and ethnic codes may still not be final at that stage. It is intended that changes will be introduced from 1 April 2000, to give Local Authority staff time to change their systems. The new codes will simplify the task authorities face in completing the '903', whilst improving the value and reliability of the data collected. - Ethnic origin information on looked after children
We intend to begin collecting ethnic data on children looked after by means of a new field to be introduced on the SSDA903 form from 1 April 2000. This will only give information from 2001 onwards - some interim data collections will be needed in the meantime.The categories to be used will need at least to harmonize with those to be used for the collection of ethnic data on staffing from September 2000 (see Staffing). Present ethnic related data on children appears to be patchy, and lack of consistency of the codes currently in use precludes the possiblity of aggregating the data to useful national totals. The ethnic codes to be introduced in the 2001 census should form the basis of a standardized national ethnic framework to be used for all Social Service related LA collections (see Proposed template for the collection of gender and ethnic data for SSD staff).
Services for adults
RAP (referrals assessments and packages of care) project
This major statistical development project in the adults and elderly area, will provide a framework for defining and collecting person based information locally on the main aspects of the community care provision and assessment process. Completed forms are now due in from authorities in respect of the RAP project first dress rehearsal, covering 1999, quarter 1. Feedback from this exercise will be available by September 1999. The project is now at second dress rehearsal stage, for the financial year 1999-2000. Full implementation of this annual collection is planned from 1 April 2000.
RAP costings work
An exercise will be running in parallel with the main RAP exercise, to look at the question of costing of packages of care. A small group consisting of DH, Audit Commission, CIPFA and LA representatives will be looking to produce some sample costings (at the national level) to be used in the RAP second dress rehearsal. The group will also be looking at wider issues, notably:
- current LA accounting practice in the treatment of main items of expenditure for both directly provided and commissioned services;
- allocation of clerical and administrative overhead costs to individual service lines. It is possible this work may have implications for the recording of financial data on the RO3 and CIPFA returns.
RAP waiting times
A second linked development is to add waiting times to RAP at some point during the second dress rehearsal, most probably from September 1999.
Performance Assessment Framework
The Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) will be introduced in 1999-2000 following wide consultation. It consists of around 40 indicators structured into five areas of performance. The PAF fits into the context of the new approach to assessing and managing social services performance following on from the White Paper "Modernising Social Services"
. Similarly a subset of the PAF will become indicators within the Best Value local government performance management structure.
All the indicators are derived from existing data sources or those soon to come on stream described elsewhere in this section. The consultation process highlighted areas where development of further data collections should be concentrated.
Key Statistics
The purpose of Key Statistics is to provide the most important pieces of currently available information on a "Fast Track"
basis. The data for 1997-98, along with budgets for 1998-99, were published in September. The 1999 collection of key statistics will be used to gather information for the Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) purposes, and the 1999 version of the Key Indicator Graphical System in late 1999 will reflect these changes.
Financial Data
The work of revising and simplifying the RO3 form for 1998-99 is now complete and has been agreed by the DETR [WGLGFS] Working Group Subgroup on Forms.
Staffing
The Training and Qualifications Template
DH has been working with EO/IDA (formerly LGMB) on setting up a template which will enable Local Authorities to collate information on the qualifications of their staff. The TQT group taking this work forward includes members of LGMB, DH and NATOPPS. A description of the current EXCEL disk-based system is given in the LGMB Social Services Analysis Handbook. The NATOPPS members of the TQT subgroup are looking into matching qualifications to posts; this work, which builds on similar work in the Welsh Office, and will, if successful enable authorities to work out their training needs in terms of the desirable - as opposed to actual - profile of jobs/qualifications.
Proposal for a template for the collection of gender and ethnic data for SSD staff
We have agreed with ADSS that we should commence collecting ethnic data on staff from September 2000 as part of the annual collection of LA social services staffing data on form SSDS001. The ethnic classifications to be used (subject to final confirmation from ONS) are given in a separate note, "The implication of the 2001 census ethnic categories on DH central collections of data; a position statement"
. DH will begin collecting gender data for all LA social services staff in September 1999.
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