Care Home Data Review - Full Report

Strategic Oversight & Co-ordination

Before looking at the specific individual challenges associated with care home data, a common request across the stakeholder engagement was for greater strategic oversight and co-ordination of data collections, analysis and outputs.

Overall strategic oversight

There are a large number of data improvement / development projects being undertaken both within and across organisations interested in care home data. This work needs to be co-ordinated across organisations and considered in the context of the much wider programme of work across health and social care to deliver the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care. The development and delivery of the Data Strategy is overseen and governed by the Health and Social Care Data Board, supported by two sub-boards: the Health & Social Care Data Delivery Sub-Board and the Health & Social Care Data Standards Sub-Board.

During the course of the review, the Social Care Data and Intelligence Programme Board (SCDIPB) was set up to support and optimise the development and analysis of social care data. The SCDIPB will be supported by the Social Care Data and Intelligence Executive Group, which will manage the overall delivery of the work programme of the Board. This new governance structure will provide greater strategic oversight, help reduce duplication and improve co-ordination by ensuring an overarching programme approach is taken, given the number of teams and organisations currently working on social care data and analysis.

The Care Home Data Review is one of the initial priority workstreams of the Executive Group. Other priority workstreams that will impact on the review are the ‘Communications and Engagement’ and ‘Changes to Social Care Data’ workstreams (see below).

Further details on the oversight and governance structures relating to health and social care data and improvements can be found in Annex 1.

Communications and Engagement Workstream – establishing data provider and user networks

Having good communication between data producers, providers and users is key to understanding the strengths and limitations of care home data, and for maximising the impact from the data.

Drawing on the expertise of the care home sector in shaping data requests could help improve data quality and increase response rates. Better engagement between data providers, producers and users should help the development of key data questions, inform the best way to communicate findings and provide a route for feedback from users of data outputs/analysis.

Feedback to the review highlighted the current lack of over-arching data provider / user networks for care home data. Local areas noted that having an appropriate data provider network would allow them to agree definitions and share good practice. The network could act as a forum through which national agencies could provide clarity on each data collection (guidance, timetables, rationale) and also where local area providers could both input into the collection process and speak to their counterparts in other areas to discuss data issues / ask for assistance. Importantly, they would also allow providers to input into how best to meet particular data demands and reduce the chance of misinterpretation of requests.

Setting up data user and provider networks is a key aim of the Communication and Engagement workstream of the Executive Group. To achieve better knowledge exchange, the CHD Working Group will work closely with the Communication and Engagement workstream of the Executive Group to establish the most useful structure(s) to meet everyone’s needs. A key consideration when developing the provider and user networks will be to ensure the maximum benefits from sector engagement whilst minimising the burden on the sector.

Changes to Social Care Data Workstream – establishing a co-ordination & prioritisation process for new data asks

The covid pandemic resulted in a large increase in the data asked from care homes, as local areas and policy makers required timely data on which to monitor covid numbers and base decisions. However, the speed at which some of the data collections were set up meant there was little scope to ensure coherence across the collections. During the review, data providers noted that, in some cases, the interpretation of data requests has not been consistent across all providers. If what is being asked is not consistently understood and applied then the data collected may not be able to be used or may be misleading. It is therefore important to ensure that the resource invested in data collection produces data that is of sufficient quality, consistency and completeness to provide real insights and allow appropriate comparisons both between areas and over time.

There were clear calls in the care home data review workshop that any new data asks should be developed in partnership with data providers. This would allow them to feed into the best way to meet particular data demands and reduce the chance of misinterpretation of requests. Working with data providers on the questions to be asked will both help establish the best way of collecting the data and support local ownership of data improvement work.

The SCDIP Executive Group’s Changes to Social Care Data workstream will look to establish a new process for evaluating the requirement for new data requests to ensure new and existing data requirements are considered at a strategic level and met in an appropriate way. One of the guiding principles for any new request is to consider both the benefits from the data and the data burden holistically. The role of the workstream is to ensure the limited resource available to change the social care data landscape, generates the largest return on investment by undertaking the highest priority project(s).

Related work – The Local Government Data Platform

In addition to the workstreams outlined above , the ongoing work on the Local Government Data Platform (LGDP) represents an ambitious transformation programme to deliver improvements in the way Local Government manages and uses data, which will have a direct impact on national collections. The LGDP aims to improve and streamline the management of data returns and to provide enhanced value from the process by providing greater insight and intelligence to Local Government itself. Whilst the LGDP covers a whole range of data collections, there are number of common themes across the work and it will be important to ensure that both projects work together to make improvements across the data landscape. More information on the LGDP is provided in the box below.

The Local Government Data Platform

Councils in Scotland have long held the aspiration to have greater control over how information is requested, submitted, and ultimately shared through a system designed for data returns, across all our services, with real time access for authorities to update their information and to assist with decision making across all spheres of government.

By providing a central repository of all local government data collected through data returns, the data platform will enable greater re-use of the data collected by external agencies, both by local government as a sector and by individual councils. The platform will also provide improved data quality, improved timeliness of data, and greater assurance for stakeholders such as Scottish Government.

The Local Government Data Platform will include three main elements (Collect & Distribute, Analyse, and Visualise) and one critical supporting strand (Governance & Data Standards). Given the number of existing data management solutions that are currently available it is anticipated that these will be provided as separate solutions in a data ecosystem.

The robust governance framework and mechanism between central and local government that will underpin the platform will ensure a collective commitment to reduce current reporting activity and keep only the data that is relevant and useful.

An Oversight Group advises on the overall strategic direction and delivery of the Local Government Data Platform. This group is jointly chaired by SOLACE and COSLA, with additional membership being drawn from key stakeholders, including the Improvement Service, the Digital Office for Local Government, the Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland.

Day-to-day activities are led by a project team comprised of staff from the Improvement Service and the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government.

Following an initial discovery phase that highlighted how current arrangements for providing data to external agencies present a number of challenges to local government in terms of volume, frequency and lack of co-ordination, Phase 2 of the programme is now underway.

The aim of Phase 2 is to define the specifications for what the future data platform will look like and how it will operate. This includes defining future governance arrangements, which will be essential to manage the lifecycle of data returns, and developing a prototype to test the architecture and operating model of a future data ecosystem which will work together to collect, validate, store, transfer and visualise data.

In order to improve and rationalise the wider future data reporting landscape, a priority for Phase 2 of the Local Government data platform is for local government and Scottish Government to work together to develop governance arrangements for agreeing current and future data reporting. It has been agreed to establish a Local Government Data Reporting Governance Group (LGDRGG), jointly chaired by COSLA and Scottish Government, which will have the authority to make decisions relating to introducing new or retiring existing data returns. Work is underway to join this initiative with the Changes to Social Care Data workstream (see above) to develop an end-to-end process.

Strategic oversight: aims and recommendations

Aim: Ensure strategic oversight of the large number of data collections / projects in the care home data space, and work to tie these together to improve coherence and reduce duplication.

Recommendation: Widely publicise the existence and Terms of Reference of Social Care Data & Intelligence Programme Board (SCDIPB), to ensure transparency in oversight.

Develop a multi-agency data plan to embed joint priorities across organisations, agree roles and responsibilities and how we collaborate on stakeholder engagement.

Aim: Improve knowledge exchange between the care home sector and the care home analytical community and ensure the care home sector has a voice with regards to national data collections and corresponding outputs.

Recommendation: Establish data providers network to help shape data collections, agree definitions, share good practice and improve data quality.

Establish data user network to help develop key data questions, inform best way to communicate findings and provide a route for feedback from users on data outputs. In addition, investigate alternative ways of engaging / collaborating with the wider sector.

Aim: Streamline and coordinate the process for approving new national data collections to limit duplication and ensure data requested is fit for purpose.

Recommendation: Put in place governance structure and agree a process for approving new national data collections to limit duplication.