Using ASCOT to inform care practice

The Adult Social Care Outcomes toolkit (ASCOT) began as a set of research instruments to measure the impact and value of social care interventions by concentrating upon the social care related quality of life of individuals who use social care interventions. This presentation explores the potential to use the ASCOT tools not just to measure social care related quality of life, but to inform improvements in care practice. It focuses primarily upon the care homes version of ASCOT (CH3) which uses mixed methods to measure care home residents’ social care related quality of life. These mixed methods include interviews with residents and staffs as well as detailed observations which provide rich data upon the ‘lived experience’ of residents. It is this very rich data that, we argue, allows the care homes version to have the greatest potential to inform and improve care practice. The presentation also considers how the other versions of ASCOT, namely a structured interview and a self-completion questionnaire, may also feed into informing and improving care practice.