A year in the life of ASC-WDS

Dave Griffiths, Head of Workforce Intelligence & Product Owner for ASC-WDS, talks about the developments we’ve made in improving ASC-WDS across the last 12 months.

I love my job. Being product manager on the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) means no two weeks are the same. I say two weeks, because that’s how we work as a team, in two-week sprints. What we work on over each set of two weeks depends on the answer to one question – what’s the most useful thing we can do?

There’s one other overarching consideration – will what we work on result in better insights for the government, for local authorities, for care providers and for other sector stakeholders. Ultimately that’s why the Department of Health and Social Care fund the service, to better understand adult social care and the issues faced by the workforce and by care providers.

In ASC-WDS we strike a deal with care providers. We provide a great user experience and useful tools and benefits, and they provide data via workplace and staff records. The last part of the deal is, we’ll then use that data to allow policy makers to make decisions based on evidence.

So, what have we been working on over the last 12 months? If you have an ASC-WDS account, I hope you’ve noticed these changes and improvements. If you don’t yet have an account, here’s what you missed:

Expanded benchmarks

Our benchmarks area allows you to compare your workforce metrics with similar providers in your local area. We spoke to care providers to see what data they’d find most valuable. Based on their feedback, we expanded the feature adding more breakdowns of pay data and recruitment and retention data. We also added new ranking charts, bar graphs and ‘useful links’ for further insight and practical tips.

Linking to a new funding source

One of the great benefits of ASC-WDS is access to funding for training staff. Historically this has been through the Workforce Development Fund and this year, the new Learning and Development Support Scheme has been introduced. An eligibility checker is built into ASC-WDS which lets you know exactly what you need to do to meet requirements.

We worked closely with the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) so that when care providers make a claim, NHS BSA can quickly check that the care provider has updated their ASC-WDS data.

Add training certificates

The most used area of ASC-WDS is the Training and Qualifications section. It lets you record your staff’s training and qualifications and helps you manage learning in your organisation. You’ll get expiry alerts when training is due to expire and you can define what training is mandatory for each job role. It’s basically a free learning management system and we’ve just made it even better with the ability to store training and qualification certificates inside the service. Users have told us they’re excited to be able to keep all their evidence in one secure place.

Actions summary

We want to ensure the data we collect is high quality and that users find ASC-WDS as quick and easy to use as possible. To help with this, we created a new summary panel which gives notifications about your data. Red and amber flags help users to understand the importance of each action. The simplified layout makes it easier to see where there are gaps or where data needs updating.

Parent experience

ASC-WDS users can record and manage lots of workplaces in the service using just one account, it’s called a ‘parent’ account. Working with larger care providers, we improved our information and experience for ‘parent’ account holders. This includes a new ‘parent’ homepage and easier navigation between workplaces.

Keeping ASC-WDS relevant

The care sector is dynamic - we work to ensure the data we collect in ASC-WDS is relevant and reflects the sector. This year, we worked closely with NHS Digital to help them measure the prevalence of digital in the sector by adding new digital job roles and training categories. The Department of Health and Social Care asked us to gather insights on International Recruitment and the new Level 2 Care Certificate qualification. The decision to add new questions into ASC-WDS always needs to be justified. We then work directly with care providers to ensure they understand new questions and can answer them.

Every decision we make to improve the service is based on feedback about what works best for care providers. If you use ASC-WDS and want to help us shape the changes we make, then sign up for user research! You don’t need any special skills to get involved, you’ll just need to be available for an hour, at a time that suits you.

Find out more about ASC-WDS or register for an account.

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