Developing the Scottish Learning and Improvement Framework for Adult Social Care Support and Community Health (SLIF) Digital Tool

Considerations for testing, implementation and further development

Now the preliminary operationalsation work is complete and the prototype Tool has been built, the next stage will be a programme of testing of the SLIF digital tool. Further development in some key areas will be required, following initial testing, to move from the prototype to a live version that can be piloted more widely.

Testing

There are three main elements of the SLIF digital tool to test.

• How does the SLIF digital tool work in practice: what works well and what can be improved?
• What needs to be in place to ensure the effective implementation and sustainability of the SLIF digital tool at scale?
• How could insights generated using the SLIF digital tool be used nationally, including to inform the work of the National Care Service Advisory Board?

Further development

Some additional areas have been identified that it would be useful to develop pathways for. Further consideration can be given to these during the testing process and in planning for piloting and wider implementation.

Development of new targeted pathways

Through the development phase, several areas of practice were identified that are encapsulated at a high level within the supporting people pathway, but could be captured in more detail in their own dedicated pathway. These include:

• Unpaid carers.
• Justice social work.
• Adult support and protection.
• Self-Directed Support.
• Transitions between children and adult services.

In addition early conversations have been underaken to explore a Primary Care and Community Health Pathway pending the publication of the Primary Care and Community Health Route Map.

Each of these areas of work is underpinned by detailed legislation, guidance and quality improvement frameworks. Incorporating them through targeted pathways within the SLIF digital tool will ensure these areas of improvement work are connected and can be reported seamlessly across the partnership. This would be done in close collaboration with specific policy teams and stakeholders to develop these targeted pathways.

Streamlining

Key stakeholders have engaged extensively throughout the development of the draft SLIF and in creating the Tool.

Organisations have identified opportunities to use the SLIF digital tool to improve their services and their reporting, both to the regulatory authorites and local commissioners. This presents an opportunity for streamlining, for example, by reducing the ways some providers report to commissioners in different areas and partnerships. This will also bring benefits to HSCPs, who will get better data and evidence about how the services they commission and procure improve outcomes for people, which is currently an identfied gap in the data system.

In order to fully realise these opportunities, the next stage of testing will work with commissioners and regulatory authorities to explore whether their reporting requirements align with the information captured through the SLIF digital tool. This is a key question to explore further during the first phase of testing of the SLIF digital tool.

Implementing and sustaining the SLIF

From evidence gathered to date, it seems reasonable to conclude that the SLIF has the potential to support the development of a more consistent approach to improvement work across the system.

Following the testing of the SLIF digital tool, supporting its wider roll out and sustainability will require:

• Supporting organisations to use the Tool and capturing learning from this process in order to develop further guidance and support.
• Co-ordinating with policy teams and scrutiny bodies to ensure the Tool is continually updated and to develop new pathways as required.
• Supporting the effective use of insights from the SLIF digital tool to drive improvement at local and national levels.

Conclusions

A key driver for the development of the SLIF was the need to support a new approach to improving outcomes and addressing the implementation gap identified in the Independent Review of Adult Social Care.

The development of the SLIF digital tool represents an important step towards this aim, taking a collaborative and iterative process, the Tool has been co-designed to provide a structured yet flexible approach to self-evaluation and improvement, enabling services to focus on what matters to people and to track their contribution to outcomes in a meaningful way.

The SLIF digital tool offers opportunities to support improvement and learning through enabling the use of diverse forms of data and evidence using a digital platform. This will support the sharing of learning across organisational boundaries. It will aim to reduce duplication and streamline reporting through aligning with existing frameworks and guidance and support services to focus their efforts on agreed areas for improvement.

The next stage of development will be the testing phase, the focus of this will be on understanding how the SLIF digital tool works in practice, what benefits it brings, and how it can be refined to support wider implementation. Continued engagement with HSCPs, providers, policy teams and scrutiny bodies will be essential to ensure the Tool is usable, impactful and sustainable.

Due to the challenges of testing the SLIF across such a complex system, in the context of existing system pressures, it is proposed that initial testing is kept to a small scale to allow learning to be embedded before further extension.

It is proposed that the findings from this initial testing would be used to inform plans for the next phase, which will pilot the SLIF with a wider range of areas.