This is part of Sapio Research’s series: 16 Useful Desk Research Sources and how to use them
What is it?
The National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC), is an online database that holds information on adults working in social care. This database contains records on 23,000 establishments and 730,000 care workers across England.
Who can use it?
Their reports are open-source and free for anyone to access from their website.
The NMDS-SC provides data on:
- The types of care service
- How much care provision there is
- The breakdown of the workforce
The Government could use the database, so could strategic bodies, commissioners and policy makers can take advantage of this data to aid policy-making, service planning, development, workforce modelling and planning at a national and local level for social care services. What is more, it could be used by local authorities to help plan how to make the best use of their budget and resources.
The NMDS-SC report they provide several benefits to small businesses:
- SMEs can share data with the Care Quality Commission and NHS quickly and easily.
- Today (11/04/2017) the BBC reported that 900 care workers quit every day, the NMDS-SC state the data can help plan your workforce, this, in turn, will contribute to improving staff retention.
How to use it
To view the reports, select “reports” from the menu on the left of the screen.



Select the type of report you want to view.



After, select which report you want to view.



When you have the report you want click download to view the report. Or, you can download a handy infographic. These infographics are an extremely effective way to see an overview of the data


