Update from September 2019. 

March 2020. eetings have taken place to address the issues with data quality regarding ASCOF 1F ((1F) Proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services in paid employment. NHS Digital produce the published data and PCFT  produce the local data based on the guidance in the ASCOF Handbook of Definitions which states that a person can only be included in the numerator if they have had an Employment/Accommodation Status recorded in the last 12 months. As a result, if an individual has a valid Employment or Accommodation Status but this was recorded over 12 months ago they will not be included in the numerator. There is a proposal to make changes so that rather than insisting that an employment or accommodation status is recorded in the last 12 months, if a valid Status has been recorded either in the last 12 months or prior to that, and a CPA Review has taken place in the last 12 months the status date of the CPA Review should be used to calculate. All Authorities across the Pennince Acute Foot print have agreed.

The measure is intended to improve outcomes for adults with mental health problems by demonstrating the proportion in stable and appropriate accommodation. This is closely linked to improving their safety and reducing their risk of social exclusion.

The target line represents the England Average.

Performance update:

Measures from the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS), 1F and 1H, have been suspended in 2016-17 due to the quality of the data

In 2015/16 the proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services living independently, with or without support is 9.7% which is significantly below the national average of 58.6%.

Data Caveat - ASCOF Appendices 2015-16

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, updated that there were technical issues that impacted on their ability to complete employment and accommodation information. The provider has made figures available directly to councils within its footprint and has worked to ensure that submissions of the new dataset from January 2016 onwards are more reliable.

For local figures please see the monthly performance measure - Proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services living independently, with or without support.

Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust - Strategic Performance Manager

Explanation with differences between Local and NHS Digital outputs

The key factor for these differences is around the way we record data and the way NHS digital process that data. If, when we review a patient, they are maintained in employment/accommodation as per the previous year, our review record will not be updated as nothing has changed. However, the way NHS Digital process the data means that their systems expected a new record every year.

In the past, where an original employment and accommodation circumstance had not changed in, for example, the last 2 years, we did not go and enter a new record purely to create a new employment or accommodation status as this was considered time consuming for the care co-ordinators time and would mean putting in additional recording burden where no clinical value was added. Therefore when no new record is reported via MHSDS, NHS Digital processing assumes we haven’t done a review and therefore the client will not be in the ASCOF numerator. However, given the LA priority that has been placed on matching local and national data, this is now what we are asking our staff to do. We therefore anticipate that the figures will be much closer going forward. This is a work-around though, and the original problem exists that NHS Digital still do not allow statuses on employment and accommodation to roll over.

We will again this year be asking NHS Digital to place a statement on next year’s reports as they have done in the previous years.