Additional notes - general

Local welfare provision schemes are included in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ RO6 (Protective, Central and Other Services) return and therefore excluded from ASC-FR. Find further guidance for what is included within the RO6 return.

'Local Authority Supported' excludes residents who are wholly supported by the NHS under Section 256 of the 2006 NHS ACT (formerly Section 28 (a)). Under Section 256, health bodies can reimburse CASSR expenditure, so ‘LA supported only’ refers to expenditure excluding these contributions.

Regarding ‘Respite Costs for Clients’, the exact coding will depend on the nature of the respite care being provided.

If the respite provision is to give the carer a break, then the costs should go against 'Carers – Community Other/Direct Payments' since the carer isn’t receiving residential care.

If the respite is part of an on-going care package for the client, then it will be recorded against the appropriate primary support reason and long term residential care.

If the respite is a one-off or short term intervention (re-enablement service) and not expected to be repeated over a long period of time, then it will be recorded under ‘Short Term to Maximise Independence’.

This will be local authority specific, but SeRCOP does expect charges to go to the appropriate service. For example:

Some IT, HR and finance costs can be directly attributable to services, such as laptop costs, phone charges, service level agreements agreements, and these should be charged to the appropriate primary support reason.

Other costs are indirectly attributable and CASSRs are free to determine how they want to allocate them. If they are charged against the primary support reason lines, then they should be included in the SSMSS column to the right of the LTS and STS worksheets.

Many costs will be included in the staffing or commissioning lines and if this is the case, they should be included in the SSMSS column so that the direct cost of the service can be ascertained.

Some overhead costs are charged directly, such as ICT equipment and phone charges, but these are true costs of running the business and aren’t generally included in SSMSS. Where they aren’t charged directly they may end up as part of the overall ICT overhead included in the SSMSS column, but these differences would not be material enough to affect unit costs.

Overheads should be allocated to the service where possible and take into account the advice in SeRCOP. If costs can’t be directly attributed, they should be recharged proportionately and also included in the SSMSS column.