Learning disability groups. Development of benefit and resource groups for adults in residential accommodation, Consultation document. Funded/commissioned by: NHS

The work reported in this paper constructs Learning Disability Benefit Group (LDBG) and Learning Disability Resource Group (LDRG) classifications. The benefit groups are built up from a survey of the personal characteristics of a sample of 2093 people with learning disabilities. Groupings that reflect the need for care were then constructed using cluster analysis. A supplementary collection of data on service utilisation and costs was carried out in order to construct Resource Groups, built on a sub-sample of 930 people. Eleven NHS trusts (supporting 69% of the clients), four voluntary sector providers, three large private sector providers and several small ones participated in the study. Learning Disability Casemix Scale (LDCS) was employed to assess 2093 clients on 14 items grouped into learning disability and challenging behaviour dimensions. A variant of the Civil Service Receipt Inventory (CSRI) was used to collect information on clients' service use patterns, and data were obtained for 930 clients - an unbiased sub-sample of clients who were assessed with the LDCS. When combined with unit cost information and additional financial data from the providers, the service use data could be converted into costs. Thus, between these two schedules, sufficient data were collected to develop Benefit Groups and Resource Groups for people with learning disabilities and to look at the cost implications.