Adult Social Care Demand Model
The demand model projects future need for adult social care by locality, so that capacity and workforce planning is based on projected demand rather than last year's activity.
Keywords
- Tags: Forecasting
- Tags: Social care
- Tags: Workforce planning
- Stage: Development
- Type: Cohort projection with statistical modelling
- Sector: Health and social care
- Language: English
How does our product work?
The model ages the current population forward, applies observed rates of care need by age band and deprivation, and projects the resulting number of care packages by type and locality.
It models populations, not people. It produces no output about any individual and is not used in any assessment of any person's needs.
Overview
Care capacity takes years to build: premises, registration, and above all trained staff. Planning it from current activity guarantees being late.
The model exists to make that lead time usable. Its outputs go to commissioners and to workforce planning, and are published in the strategic commissioning plan.
Owner and responsibility
More detailed information on the system
Here you can get acquainted with the information used by the system, the operating logic, and its governance in the areas that interest you.
System description
Projections are published as scenarios with explicit assumptions rather than as a single figure, because the dominant uncertainty is policy and funding rather than demography.
The strict boundary that the model never operates at individual level is a design decision recorded in its governance approval, not merely current practice.
Data sources
Population projections from the national statistics authority. Aggregated care package data by age band, locality and deprivation decile. No individual records.
References
Model assumptions log and sensitivity analysis.