Developing a measure of social care outcome for older people: interim report

<p>An essential element of identifying Best Value and monitoring cost-effective care, key policy objectives (Department of Health, 1998), is to be able to identify the outcomes of care. This paper reports on a project commissioned as part of the Department of Health’s Outcomes of Social Care for Adults Initiative to develop a measure of outcome of social care for older people. There is a need for a measure in the field of social care that can compare outcomes over a range of different circumstances, which links directly to the objectives of social care for elderly people and that reflects welfare gain from services. The aim of this project is to devise such a measure.