Measuring Outcomes of Care Homes
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Measuring Outcomes of Care Homes (MOOCH)
IRAS ID
184211
Contact name
Ann-Marie Towers
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent at Canterbury
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Policy makers and providers in the UK and internationally are becoming significantly more focused on the outcome of care. The Care Act has emphasised the importance of delivering good outcomes. In England, the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) measures the performance of the adult social care system as a whole and includes a core domain on enhancing quality of life for people with care and support needs, which is measured using the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT). ASCOT measures the areas of quality of life most affected by social care services. As well as having toolkits aimed at measuring the outcomes of service users, there is also now an ASCOT-carer measure, which measures the outcomes of the family/friend (unpaid) care.
Despite the policy emphasis on outcome measurement and the importance of care homes in meeting the needs of older people with long-term care needs, there is relatively little information available about the social care outcomes of care home residents and/or their family carers. The aim of this study is to find out more about the social care-related quality of life of older people living in care homes and their family/friend (unpaid) carers. In particular, we will look at how the care and support being provided by the homes impacts on this quality of life and how this relates to the different kinds of quality judgements being made about homes by local authorities and the care regulator, CQC. This study partly builds on previous work undertaken to adapt ASCOT for use as a care home quality indicator (see Towers et al, 2015: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/15/304 ) and as such, one of the aims of the study is to pilot the new adapted toolkit with one local authority quality monitoring team (East Sussex County Council), who are partners in this research.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
15/IEC08/0061
Date of REC Opinion
10 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion