Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 - Data Validation tool user guide
This guide explains how to use the Validation Tool that has been built by the Adult Social Care Statistics team at NHS England, to assist councils in submitting data for the 2023-24 DoLS data collection. It replicates the validation work that the NHS England will do upon receipt of each council’s data, prior to accepting it. We hope that data submitters will be able to use this to “pre-validate” their data and to easily identify, locate and correct any issues that may exist.
How to use the DoLS Validation Tool
- Ensure macros are enabled in Excel; if you are not sure how to do this then please contact your IT department. Depending on your system settings, you may need to save the Validation Tool to your local folders.
- Ensure that Validation Tool is the only workbook open. Please close all other workbooks prior to the Validation Tool before running the process.
- Click the 'Run' button on the 'Validation' worksheet to start the validation process.
- A file dialog box will appear as shown below, browse to the folder containing the file to be validated, click on the DoLS data file (DoLS 2023-24 data template) you wish to validate and then click the 'Select' button.
- The user will only be able to select excel files. The Validation Tool is only programmed to analyse 2023-24 DoLS data entered on the data template. Data files from earlier reporting years will not work correctly.
The validation process will now run. A message similar to the one below will be shown indicating the progress.
When the validation process is completed, a message will be shown based on whether the data file selected has passed or failed the validation. The file will be classed as failed if one or more issues are found.
A message similar to the one below will be shown if the data file has passed the validation.
This message will be shown if the data file has failed the validation
If the data file selected has failed validation, a new worksheet named ‘DoLS’ will be added to the Validation Tool after the ‘Report’ sheet, which will be a copy of the analysed DoLS file. This copy of the DoLS data will have all the cells which breached validation criteria highlighted in yellow, and the corresponding row will be highlighted in grey, to help users locate the issue.
Please refer to the DoLS sheet on the Validation Tool to identify the data which has failed the validation.
The Validation workbook has the following work sheets:
1. ‘Validation’ worksheet: This worksheet has the ‘Run’ button which the user needs to click to start the validation process.
2. ‘Summary’ worksheet: This worksheet will be updated with the file name and the time the validation was run and will also have the summary of the validation process once it is completed. This sheet is intended to provide a quick summary of the data.
Shown below is an example screenshot of the Summary sheet.
3. ‘Report’ worksheet: This worksheet will be updated at the end of validation only if the data file has failed the validation. This sheet will have a list of all the records which failed the validation and detail the specific criteria that have been breached. The sheet can be filtered on the ‘Row Number’ to get all the errors for a specific row. The sheet will have the column ‘Error Message’ updated with error message for each cell which has failed the set validation criteria. This sheet is similar to the validation reports that we have issued in previous years.
An example screenshot of the Report sheet is shown below
4. ‘DoLS’ worksheet : A new worksheet ‘DoLS’ will be added after the ‘Report’ sheet at the end of validation, which will be a copy of the actual DoLS sheet from the selected data file, if the data file has failed the validation. In this sheet all the cells which have failed validation will be highlighted in yellow and the corresponding row will be highlighted in grey. For each highlighted cell there will be an entry in the ‘Report’ sheet with the detailed error message.
Once you have saved the validation report sheets, if you want to re-run it, please close and re-open the Validation Tool to reset it.
The ‘DoLS’ sheet in the validation workbook is just a copy, and should be used only as reference for identifying and highlighting errors. The validation errors should be fixed by making changes to your actual 2023-24 DoLS data template.
Please do not delete any sheets from the Validation Workbook.
Troubleshooting
1. “File Selected does not have a DoLS worksheet. Please select the DoLS data return file for validation”
The validation tool will only run successfully if the DoLS 2023-24 template has been selected. Please ensure that you have downloaded the current years template and that you are not using a previous years template.
This message can also occur if you have renamed or deleted any of the sheets on the DoLS return template. You should download a new template and copy across your records.
Also, the sheet containing the DoLS data needs to be remain named as “DoLS” or the above error will occur.
2. “There was an issue running the validation tool”
There are a few possibilities which would cause the above error message
- Your data return may contain one or more Excel errors e.g. #N/A or #REF. The quickest way to identify these errors is by doing Ctrl and F then typing in #. Or you can add filters to the columns and search that way.
- The sheets within the validation tool have been altered in some way e.g. renamed or deleted. To ensure the tool runs as expected, please do not make any changes to the tool.
- The formulae within the template has been altered or deleted. This applies to the “Application Reference” which is automatically calculated. If you have unprotected the template using the password, please be careful not to delete the formula within this column.
- You may have blank Planned End Date cells that have a space at the start. To fix, just filter your return to only bring back the rows with a ‘blank’ Planned End Date using the filter in cell U8. Then delete the contents of those cells.
The validation tool is intended to assist you with making corrections to your return. It should not be solely relied upon to ensure the accuracy of your data and so we would always advise you to check your entries make sense alongside using the tool.
Contact us
For queries on the DoLS Validation Tool, please email us at [email protected].
Last edited: 30 March 2023 2:03 pm