National Minimum Dataset - Social Care

It will influence policy-making ensuring there are sufficient numbers of skilled employees to deliver a nationwide high quality social care service. It will also allow interested parties at a local and national level to have a clear picture of how the social care workforce is made up at present in terms of, for example, ethnicity, gender and age. No one will be personally identified and all data will be anonymised.

What is the NMDS-SC?

• The NMDS-SC is the first attempt to gather workforce information for the social care sector.

• The NMDS-SC is a single collection of information from care providers about their organisation and their employees (paid and unpaid).

• The NMDS-SC is a means of gathering a minimum of information about services and staff across all service user groups and sectors within social care. It includes both local authorities and private, voluntary and independent social care providers.

• The information will be used, confidentially, to make policy decisions on how to support employers and staff in delivering quality services.

Who has developed NMDS-SC?

The NMDS-SC has been developed by all the major networks and organisations associated with social care including:

• Skills for Care (opens in a new window)

• Children’s Workforce Development Council (opens in a new window)

• Department of Health (opens in a new window)

• Local Government Association (opens in a new window)

• Employers Organisation

• Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) (opens in a new window)

• NHS Strategic Health Authorities

• Learning and Skills Council (opens in a new window)

• General Social Care Council (opens in a new window)

• other national bodies.

Who needs to complete the NMDS-SC?

All care providers (registered and non-registered) will be asked to complete the NMDS-SC from the private, voluntary and statutory sectors who offer care services for adults, families and children eg residential, day care, domiciliary, community care, healthcare.

What sort of information will be collected?

There are two parts to the NMDS-SC:

Part One: Team/Unit– establishment details, the type of care each team/unit/establishment provides, details of staff job roles and staff leaving and vacancies

Part Two: Individual employees – gender, age, ethnicity, disability, job role, hours worked, training and qualifications

Will the information be kept confidential?

All information will be collected and held in accordance with the Data Protection Act. Individual employers will be able to access and use their own information. Apart from this, information will only be available in aggregated and anonomysed form and individual staff will not be identified.

Different levels of information will be available to local, regional and national organisations to help identify funding, training and resources required to support social care employers.

Contact

Chris Cookman
NMDS Data Co-ordinator
Social Services
G9
County Hall
Matlock

email: chris.cookman@derbyshire.gov.uk
Tel: 01629 532435
VOiP ext 32435