Residential Rehab Outcomes Project

The project will cover the whole of the UK, though at this time there are significant challenges to fully account for the differences of the devolved administrations. The main issue for Scotland is the use of TOPS and NDTMS.

We are completely commited to the use of TOPS and are unlikely to use another tool for Scotland. TOPS is very easy to use and has a good research base; although it was sponsored by the NTA it can freely be used outside England.

The NDTMS is more problematic. If and when the project is fully funded, it may be possible to introduce a version of the software that uses SMR25 rather than NDTMS. This is highly unlikely during the pilot stage and we cannot promise this will happen at all (unless a Scottish body wished to fund this).

The difficulty this raises for Care Managers in Scotland is that participation in the project would in the near term involve inputing NDTMS data into the placements database as well as continuing with existing SMR25 returns. This would not be a great deal of work, but should be kept in mind.