Performance and quality: user experiences of home care services. Final report

Abstract

Reflecting and learning from the perspective of service users is an increasingly important aspect of government policy. In order to reflect this in performance indicators relating to the quality of services, all councils with social services responsibilities (CSSRs) are required to undertake user experience surveys (UES). In 2002-2003 the survey focused on older users of home care. This paper reports on the findings of an extension to that survey conducted as part of the PSSRU Costs, Quality and Outcomes programme. The principal aims of the UES extension study were: to add value to the User Experience Surveys for a sample of participating local authorities by enhancing comparability across dimensions not included in the four required items;to enable authorities to compare the quality of home care providers in their authorities and with providers used by other authorities;to assess the questions devised by ONS for their suitability as performance indicators;to facilitate the further development measurement of quality of homecare service.This report focuses on the evaluation of the conduct of the survey, the validity of the performance indicators, development of indicators of user experiences of quality and outcome and the factors associated with variations in these