National Data Strategy – FCC and NCF joint response

National Care Forum (NCF) and Future Care Capital (FCC) are delighted to respond to the draft health and social care data strategy, recognising the significance such a strategy could have to improve the lives of people engaging with care services and care providers who continue to deliver high quality care across England. 

In this response we are responding on behalf of the care sector, from the perspective of care providers as well as those developing data analysis solutions and products. We welcome the draft strategy, which is timely and will be launched in a rapidly changing health and care context. The final strategy will be published as the Health and Care bill is scrutinised in parliament, and there is an opportunity for beneficial change with integrated care systems (ICSs) being a key driver of improvement and innovation, if implemented in the right way. 

Firstly, we set our reflections to the strategy, secondly, we provide a specific comment on chapter 4. dedicated to adult social care, and finally, we outline a series of principles to be used when developing the next iteration of the strategy. 

The 15 Principles: 

• Consult and communicate with the sector regularly to co-design and implement specific parts of the strategy, using the principles described here.
• Engage with the CQC and wider regulatory environment (including those responsible for bothorganisationsand regulated professionals) for social care to facilitate ongoing communication. 
• Social Care should have a stand-alone chapter, as well as being integrated throughout the strategy.
• Data driven products and services are key innovations in the sector. However, there is an urgent need for the improvement of data capture systems to reduce the burden for the sector and provider higher quality data for analytics and service management.
• Must be based on what matters to people in receipt of care
• Focus should be to drive improvement in quality & provision of care & support
• The strategy needs to acknowledge that data is not free, to collect or maintain
• The burden of data collection must be balanced by the benefit of doing so
• Data providers must benefit from the data – the Capacity Tracker has clearly taught us this
• Absolute clarity on purpose and function of data collection is essential
• The data produced needs to be of a high quality and analysis needs to be suitably robust to drive sufficient decision making
• Clear terms of engagement with the sector on providing data, use of data, and access to data is vital
• The data strategy needs to hold the voice of social care as foundational – embedding it into the data strategy development & implementation timeline
• Supporting relevant research for social care,prioritisedby social care 
• Clarity as to the alignment of CQC within the strategy – to what extent will the regulator act in relation to these proposals? And how will the non-CQC regulated sector be considered?

The window for response to the draft strategy has been extended to 20th August, have your say here. 

Read the full joint submission from FCC and NCF below.