Common Assessment

Framework
For Adults
At the moment, all the organisations that look after
your health use different ways of recording your
information. The NHS records them one way, one
social care organisations records them another way,
and another social care organisation might record
them differently too.

We need a way to bring all those records together,

so you will only have to tell people your details
once, and if your situation changes, everyone who
needs to know about it will be looking at the same
system, so they will all be on the same page.
What is the Common
Assessment Framework?
Whenever you go somewhere to be looked after, whatever the reason, your care has to
be planned. The Common Assessment Framework, CAF, will replace the ways different
social care organisations do their plans.

This is because the government wants all the organisations that care for people to talk
to each other in a more efficient way.

Their idea on how to do this is to set up one way of recording as much as possible of
the information social care organisations and the NHS need in a computer system that
everyone who needs to can access, but keeps your information secret and safe when
necessary.

What can I do?

Read the next five pages carefully! This is all based on a government consultation which
you can find at the NHS website, www.dh.gov.uk. They want to know whether you
agree with their plans, can you see any problems, is there anything you can solve for
them, do you have an insights from your own experiences of social care, whether
you're working for the system or living in it? Post or email your comments, ideas and
questions by 12 April 2009 to:

CAF Consultation
Department of Health
Room 123
Wellington House
135-155 Waterloo Road
London SE1 8UG

Email: caf@dh.gsi.gov.uk
Why now?
As more and more people now use computers, it's the best time to come up with a
system that everyone can use.

Working out what care

people need
The government is proposing several ways of working out how much care people need,
and different ways of assessing them depending on what stage the person is at. The
government hope to build on and improve the relatively new Single Assessment
Process which is currently used for caring for older people, and make the care and
support more personal. They want to do this through different levels of assessment:

Self-assessment
There are more and more situations where people who need support can work out
their your own needs are and get support and advice based on the evidence they give.
One example is getting equipment to help you out at home from a community fund,
another could be getting support and advice for coping with and treating long term
illness.

Supported assessment
Similar to self-assessment, you use your own experiences and ideas to work out what
you need with help and advice from a care or health professional, who will help you
identify if you are taking unnecessary risks.

Contact assessment
If you or your carers think you have more complex needs, a contact assessment will
help you work out what you need to do next and all the options that you have.

Overview assessment
This kind of assessment will be offered to you by your health or social care worker
because they think that you'll get some benefit from looking at all your circumstances
together – by looking at things like your home and family life, how you feel, your
physical abilities and social needs , how your culture or beliefs affect your care, as well
as everything else you're experiencing to come up with the best way of caring for you.
Specialist assessment
If something comes up outside of the normal assessment process that changes your
circumstances, or if a contact or overview assessment brings up something you need to
look at, you can have a specialist assessment to work out what to do about it.

Carers assessment
Carer's needs should be assessed regularly as well. Your needs, and the needs of people
you care for will change regularly and our health and social care services should
support your efforts. You should be involved in other assessments as well.

Keeping up to date
Reviewing your needs
One or two assessments at the beginning of the process are not very useful when
things change, or illnesses progress. Because of this, health and social care services
should be reviewing people's needs, without prompting, on a regular basis.

Care coordinators
Having someone in particular you can contact to talk to can be very helpful when you're
in need of long term care. The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) wants to set up
care coordinators, single points of contact, whether they're a professional health or
social care worker or someone hired just to be a care coordinator. If you're familiar with
the way health and social care services work, you could be your own coordinator, or if
you have a carer they could.

The care coordinator role is very important, as you will have to trust them with your
information, and act as a central point for everyone to talk to, including you, any carers,
and health and social care workers.

Financial support
The CAF also wants to set up more systems that will help you spend the money you use
for your care and support in the best way for you. A care broker could help you work
out where your money will be put to best use.

All these ideas will need more computer systems to support them than are around at
the moment. CAF is being tested at a few places around the country, and this will help
the government work out what computer systems everyone should get.
What information do you
want to collect?
The government wants to collect enough data to give anyone with access to your file a
really good picture of what support and care you need. They want to include:

All about you

• Your NHS number: this is what will link you to other health care systems.
• Your name, age, and so on.
• Where you live.
• People and pets who depend on you.
• People who you depend on.
• What you do, for instance work, hobbies, activities
• Whether you need any help communicating (for instance if you're hard of
hearing)
• Your doctor
• Who you want to be able to see your details
• How easy it is for you to make decisions for yourself

Why you might need care or support

• A summary that says why you've been referred to health or social care services,
or why you might need their help. This includes the results of your contact
assessment.
• Information to support you to:
◦ Improve your health by telling us about your physical and mental needs.
◦ Improve your independence by telling us about your day to day activities
◦ Have as much choice and control as possible by telling us how you like to
be cared for and supported
◦ Feel safer by telling us how you can be more secure, whether you're being
treated fairly, and whether you're having any problems with bullying or
abuse.
◦ Improve how you live your life by supporting you with housing issues, and
helping you keep healthy and cared for.
◦ Get more education or training where it helps
◦ Keep your relationships and social life going
◦ Keep your head above water financially
What care and support you should get
• Your care plan, which will be the result of all the information you give plus the
contact and overview assessments your health or social care agencies do with
you. Agencies could either record key details of your care plan, or the whole
thing, depending on how they're set up.
• If you have specific needs or something happens which changes the level of
care you need, the government wants to make sure the results of your
specialist assessment, that is, how they are going to care for you or support
you, are on the system.

What are you going to do

with this information?
The government wants health and social care agencies to share information better.

However, they don't want anyone to share your information unless you agree to it. You
should be able to agree to certain people seeing your information, but you should also
be able to say that other people don't get to see it.

This is already being done by some councils, but taking it to a national level makes it
much more complicated, which makes it more risky. Some of the more obvious risks
are:
• Health and social care agencies do not all have the same computer systems.
This means that messages about consent – who sees what information – might
not be passed along properly. Everyone needs to be working with the same
standards.
• Not all the information the government and councils have is great quality. If
this is going to work we all need to be working to the same standards so we can
trust the information on the system.
• Different ways of talking about the same things. A social care agency in
Norfolk might use different words and methods to dealing with situations than
a clinic in Liverpool. Everyone needs to explain what they're doing well enough
for everyone else to understand.
• Not enough training on computer systems. People still think computers can
slow things down, because they're typing up notes twice, or having to redo
care plans they've done one way because the computer won't accept them, or
they lack confidence and training using computers.
What will the new computer
system look like?
The government thinks that mainly it will be based on the current NHS system.

They would like to make sure that if you already have a system in place, that all the
useful information you record can go on there, such as answers to assessment
questions. Where you're using paper files, they want to look into moving away from
them towards computer records.

Social care services should have much more access to NHS information.

Eventually the government hopes that people will be able to update basic details
themselves, like address details.

They're looking into systems that will be more helpful at crunch points in the care
system, usually when people are moving from one kind of care another, for example if
they're discharged from hospital and need to go into social care, or social care needs to
bring in another health or care agency to help with care.

Remember to write to the address

on page 2 if you have anything
to say about these plans!

I hope you found this easy to understand. This is a totally unofficial

translation of the Common Assessment Framework: for Adults
consultation from the Department of Health at www.dh.gov.uk.
For more translations go to www.simplyunderstand.com.