Personal outcome measures and postal surveys of social care

Joanna Apps, Tanya Crowther and Julien Forder

The drive for greater personalisation of social care has led not only to interest in gauging performance by measuring the outcomes of individuals receiving support but also in exploring personalised ways to measure those outcomes. Work has been underway since 2009 among a group of local authorities in England, led by Oxford City Council, to incorporate personal outcome measures (POs) into social care assessments, care package planning and review. Personal outcomes are the goals people want to achieve through the social care services and support they receive. Personal outcomes are often categorised as ‘soft’ outcomes and placed in contrast to ‘hard’, process-based measures of service performance and throughput. They are also often distinguished from outcomes based on policy or clinical outcomes.

The aim of the study was to assess the feasibility of including a PO measure in a postal survey: the Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS).

This work was commissioned as part of QORU’s responsive mode.

The report can be downloaded on the publications page, or directly.

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