Our Resource Allocation System has a new name!

Over the past ten years, our Resource Allocation System (RAS) has continually evolved beyond its original purpose of producing an indicative budget for adult social care. With each iteration and many customer collaborations, we've developed a feature-rich suite of tools with functionality that extends beyond 'resource allocation'.

Some key development milestones have included

  • Auto-generated ‘quality assurance’ feature relating to assessment answers
  • A mapping to the CHC ‘Checklist’ with predicted A/B/C scores and a recommendation on referral
  • The ability to configure the algorithm for people with CHC-funded care
  • The option to generate funding splits between health and social care for adults with more complex health needs
  • The introduction of ‘What if’ outputs, giving a range of estimated budgets for different scenarios
  • Development of a combined algorithm for children and young people’s social care and continuing care
  • Development of an education banding tool for SEND which calculates estimated top-up funding amounts for young people

Introducing Formulate

With this in mind, we believe it’s the right time to launch a new name for the RAS that better reflects the benefits it now offers. Following extensive consultation, the name we have chosen is ‘Formulate’.

We feel that Formulate encompasses the key attributes of algorithm-based decision-making for individual health, social care and SEND budgets in that it is driven by forms, uses a formula and helps practitioners formulate a plan with budget-holders.

This means the algorithms in the suite for different cohorts of people will be called:

For adults and carers

  • Formulate for Adult Social Care (including Formulate for Residential and Nursing Care)
  • Formulate for Carers
  • Formulate for Continuing Healthcare
  • Formulate for Health Outcomes.

For children and young people

  • Formulate for Children and Young People’s Social Care
  • Formulate for Children and Young People’s Continuing Care
  • Formulate for SEND (Education Banding Tool)