Dates: 1 September 2015 - 31 August 2019
Funder: Health Foundation
Project description
Studying underlying trends in social care activity and expenditure, and their implications for the wellbeing of people with social care needs, their carers and the performance of the health and social care systems in England is challenging. It is therefore crucial that robust approaches are developed for comparing through time local and national social care expenditure and activity figures in England.
This study is exploring underused data to help provide information on the pressures facing the publically funded social care system in England to assist policy makers on where to focus attention. This involves the development of new robust methodologies that enable the comparison of social care performance and activity through time, in England overall and across local authorities, using publicly-available information. The study will develop indicators which can be used to compare objectively social care trends through time, and which reflect, in addition to variations in raw activity, possible changes in the impact of social care services on the quality of life of people with social care needs and of their carers, and on the performance of the health and social care systems.
Methods
The study is reviewing and collecting publicly available local and national data on broad indicators of social care need, social care supply, local authority social care activity and social care service quality. It will also review methodological approaches to discounting and to the construction of price indices, and their applicability to the social care context and apply alternative assumptions for the standardisation of observed trends through time.
Further project information
Principal Investigator: Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez
CPEC Research team: Raphael Wittenberg, Martin Knapp, Javiera Cartegena-Farias
Countries: England
Keywords: financing, social care
Contact
Jose-Luis Fernandez
j.fernandez@lse.ac.uk