Common assessment for adults pilot announced

The Department of Health will next month launch a call for interest in a pilot scheme for local authority-led consortia to produce IT systems to enable health and social care bodies to share information.

The aim of the scheme is to develop systems for a Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for adults which would enable health and social care bodies to share information on assessment and care planning.

A spokesperson for the DH told EHI Primary Care: “The proposal is that the scheme will be funded for three years and receive £11m capital funding per year.”

She said it was too soon to say how many local authorities would be involved as this would depend on the interest shown in the scheme.

The Health Service Journal reported last week that Carl Evans, project policy lead for the CAF, told an NHS Confederation conference session that the scheme would provide cost-effectiveness information that would be used to make a case to the Treasury for funding for a full roll-out.

The model will involve connecting social services systems to national Spine services to enable them to interface with the NHS.

To provide a foundation on which information sharing can take place three local authorities and one care trust are piloting links between their social care systems and the NHS Personal Demographics Service (PDS).