Title: Data Linkage in social care: Pilot Project
Funder: Division for Social Care and Health Research (Wales)

Abstract: Existing data linkage projects in Wales that utilise routinely collected administrative data have focussed on health datasets only. To build the complete picture of service provision there is a need to broaden this to include social service provision by Local Authorities, and provision of support by third sector organisations. The tried and tested Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) system allows large routine datasets to be presented for research with links at the level of the individual, but with all individuals remaining anonymous. Currently SAIL holds mainly health service based datasets, but these alone fail to present the full picture of service and support provided to individuals. This project will test the feasibility of enhancing the SAIL resource for social care related research and service development, whilst complying with the requirements of data protection legislation and confidentiality guidelines. The work proposed here is a pilot project to test the feasibility of linking datasets from a local authority, the NHS and third sector organisations. This is a partnership between Bangor University, Gwynedd Local Authority Adult Social Services and Swansea University. The focus of this work will be on individuals who are referred to social services in order to avoid admission to hospital or to facilitate their discharge from hospital. The data linkage will include organisations and services which provide interventions and support in community settings. This is likely to include such things as HECS (Home Enhanced Care Services), Enhancement, Intermediate Care and Telecare support as well as the interaction and services provided by the 3rd Sector such as the British Red Cross, Care and Repair and so on. It is proposed to second a data officer from Gwynedd Local Authority Adult Social Services to work on the liaison with all the organisations involved and the data access and linkage into SAIL. The data officer will work closely with a senior analyst in SAIL and will access SAIL training in Swansea during the course of the project. The data officer will work closely with an experienced social care research team in Bangor University to identify the organisation and datasets relevant to the cohort of service users. Part of the feasibility study will be to assess the range and quality of the data available in each of the relevant organisations and to better understand the utility of data linkage across statutory and third sector organisations. An issue to be addressed in the anonymisation process will be handling free-text data fields. These fields potentially hold names or other identifying information and so cannot be easily anonymised. We will explore the use of specialised software to automatically extract and code information from free-text fields. The work will be supported by the NISCHR Academic Social Care Collaboration (ASCC) North Wales team. The project falls within the model led by the Bangor University arm of ASCC focusing on the use of routinely collected data in social care settings. The work will also draw together organisation from the statutory and third sector


Research activity codes: 4.4 POPULATION SCREENING
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE