Guidance

Adult social care efficiency tool

Helps local authorities to understand how their services compare for value for money with similar local authority areas.

Documents

Adult social care spending efficiency tool

Details

The adult social care efficiency tool identifies similar areas (or ‘statistical neighbours’) for adult social care delivery for older people and working age adults with learning disabilities. These are the two largest groups who receive adult social care. The comparable indicators include spending per head, quality of services and access to services.

The tool provides a basis for comparing spending and outcomes between councils and helps directors of adult social services and local authority financial leads to find new opportunities for improving adult social care efficiency.

It is for use by councils to assess their own performance, and to identify where different approaches in comparable local authorities may provide examples to learn from. It cannot be used to make judgements about the relative performance of councils in delivering adult social care services, nor can it provide answers as to what the ‘correct’ price is for care.

This version of the tool has been updated to incorporate 2013 and 2014 data. This tool is designed to work best with Excel version 2010 or later. If you need a version optimised for Excel 97-2003 please email scfinance-enquiries.

Published 5 August 2014
Last updated 12 June 2015 + show all updates
  1. Updated to include new version of adult social care efficiency tool.

  2. First published.