Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

Cost to provide care and support

Financial information is highly valuable information to have at client level including for:

• Reporting service cost benchmarking to local authorities.
• Analysing cost variation between services, including analysis of cost-effectiveness.
• Understanding cost variation across clients, as a key marker of the intensity of service required.
• Assessing changes in intensity of care and cost over time for individual clients.

From April 2023, the CLD collection will capture planned costs associated with services, rather than actual spend which is captured separately in the ASC-FR return. Despite the limitations of using planned cost information, we understand that planned spend will typically be easier for local authorities to provide and that in many respects it can be a preferred measure, reflecting care needs better and for insight into intensity of care.

The service categories below should have an associated cost in the CLD collection.

• All Long-Term Support, excluding CASSR Commissioned Support Services
• Short Term Residential Care, Short Term Nursing Care and Carer Respite
• Carers Support, excluding CASSR Commissioned Support Services.

The methodology of recording financial information is based on the trials in the North West Pilots, and consideration of the LGA Markets and Modelling Project where service costs were collected from volunteer local authorities.

The inclusion of Cost Frequency (unit type) is intended to allow flexibility in the way local authorities report the cost of services. If it is not possible to match the unit, costs can be aggregated to a time-period frequency.

Collecting the fields of ‘unit cost’, ‘cost frequency’ and ‘planned units per week’ will provide more timely data compared to the average fee rates in the existing local authority average data returns (ASC-FR and iBCF). This will enable DHSC to better understand the range of costs that local authorities face and the impacts of those on different groups of providers and clients when making policy decisions. It will also support understanding of provider market risk and facilitate forecast financial support required for the sector.