Care Act Assessments: Key decisions

[NevadaM]

Hi everyone,

On the 25th of June 2026, we held a standards working group session that focused on our effort to develop standards for Care Act Assessments. Our overall objective is not to standardise the questions social workers are asking in assessments (which are generally heterogeneous between local authorities), but instead to provide a standard structure for the information captured in assessments to be stored in, thus enabling interoperability and more functional data sharing between agencies and services.

We presented our first draft of a standard for the assessment specification as well as three key decisions we needed your help with. These are screenshotted below. As we write up the working group feedback and our response to it, we welcome you to provide any further comments or suggestions in this discussion thread.

Thanks for your help.
-Neil

1: Communication needs and AboutMe

2: Contextual, narrative information

3: Standardising less, not more