Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

1. What is the ‘Trusted Assessor’ approach?

The ‘Trusted Approach’ approach is an initiative driven by the NHS to reduce the number of delayed discharges. The underlying principle of the approach is to promote safe and timely discharges from NHS Trusts to adult social care services.

The new approach allows adult social care providers to adopt and use assessments carried out while people are still in hospital, as long as the assessment was made under a suitable ‘Trusted Assessor Agreement.’

2. Who are ‘Trusted Assessors’?

‘Trusted assessors’ must have the qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience needed to carry out health and social care assessments, and to formulate plans of care on behalf of adult social care providers.

Providers must be confident that Trusted Assessors understand the needs their service can meet, and that the discharges to their service they arrange will be appropriate.

Trusted Assessor accountability and employment arrangements vary. They can work for local provider organisations, hospital trusts, or under collaborative arrangements. Specific employment and accountability arrangements must be set out in Trusted Assessor agreements.

A professional who is trusted to make an assessment of your needs on behalf of one or more organisations, such as a council, care provider or hospital, so that you only need to be assessed once. Trusted assessors may come from the health, social care or the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE). Trusted assessors are used, for example, to help you prepare to leave hospital, to arrange support such as equipment and adaptations to help you live at home, or to carry out an assessment of your needs as a carer.