Skip to main content
Guidance

Adult social care outcomes framework: handbook of definitions

Sets out the technical detail of each adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF) measure.

Updates to this page

From:
Department of Health and Social Care
Published:
18 July 2017
Last updated:
10 March 2026
Show all updates

  1. Amended the handbook to show that the secondary uses service dataset is the source of the health data used for metric 2D. Metric 2D relates to the proportion of people aged 65 and over who remain in the community in the 12 weeks following discharge from hospital.

  2. Amended handbook following changes from 2024 to 2025.

  3. Updated the adult social care outcomes framework handbook of definitions, partly to reflect the data source changes from SALT to CLD, and also removed all previous versions of the handbook.

  4. Added the adult social care outcomes framework 2023 to 2024: handbook of definitions. Removed the draft handbook.

  5. Adult social care outcomes framework 2023 to 2024: draft handbook of definitions added to page

  6. Added updated handbook for 2018 to 2019.

  7. Added 2017/18 handbook of definitions.

  8. First published.

Documents

The adult social care outcomes framework: handbook of definitions

HTML

Details

The adult social care outcomes framework (ASCOF) measures how well care and support services achieve the outcomes that matter most to people.

The ASCOF handbook of definitions sets out the technical detail of each measure, with examples to minimise confusion and inconsistency in reporting and interpretation.

Sign up for emails or print this page