Measuring care home quality based on residents’ quality of life:Phase1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a care home quality indicator based on residents’ social care related quality of life: adaptation of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit from the individual level to the home level.
IRAS ID
141873
Contact name
Ann-Marie Towers
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent
Research summary
The study aims to begin the initial development of a new draft measure of care home quality. It will be a summary
measure of the extent to which care homes for older people support the social care related quality of life (QoL) of
residents. It will adapt the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT), from the individual residents’ quality of life to
the care home level. It could potentially support
• older people and their families/carers when choosing a care home,
• local authority commissioners and quality monitoring teams assessing quality clauses in contracts with care homes,
and
• care home providers’ quality assurance and improvement processes.
Professional stakeholders (including local authorities, care home managers and the regulator) have been consulted
about what they would find useful. Conceptual adaptation of the existing ASCOT outcome areas is ongoing, along with
mapping of the outcome areas/toolkit to existing quality frameworks to clarify what is being added and to avoid
Social Care REC Form Reference: IRAS Version 3.5
Date: 5 141873/515614/27/186
The study aims to begin the initial development of a new draft measure of care home quality. It will be a summary
measure of the extent to which care homes for older people support the social care related quality of life (QoL) of
residents. It will adapt the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT), from the individual residents’ quality of life to
the care home level. It could potentially support
• older people and their families/carers when choosing a care home,
• local authority commissioners and quality monitoring teams assessing quality clauses in contracts with care homes,
and
• care home providers’ quality assurance and improvement processes.
Professional stakeholders (including local authorities, care home managers and the regulator) have been consulted
about what they would find useful. Conceptual adaptation of the existing ASCOT outcome areas is ongoing, along with
mapping of the outcome areas/toolkit to existing quality frameworks to clarify what is being added and to avoid
duplication. The project runs concurrently with a linked project from March 2013 to April 2014 (screc 13IEC0800019),
which is consulting potential lay users about what they would find useful to help make the measure relevant and easy
to use.
We plan to shadow and test the feasibility of a local authority quality monitoring/improvement team using the draft
measure as they audit two care homes as part of their monitoring process. Local authorities play a role in supporting
quality improvement in care homes and have told us they would value a tool that supports the use of observation to
gather evidence, which focuses on the quality of resident outcomes. The results from the shadowing and interviews
with shadowed staff will feed into further refinement of the draft toolkit and methodology by the research team. The
study is being funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research.REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
13/IEC08/0045
Date of REC Opinion
11 Nov 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion