Benefit Groups and Resource Groups for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities in Residential Accommodation

Abstract

Service commissioning is now a more formalized activity, and both purchasers and providers employ a variety of tools to inform their decision‐making. The present paper examines whether ‘benefit groups’ and ‘resource groups’ can be developed so as to assist these decision‐making processes by using a survey of the characteristics of 2093 adults with intellectual disabilities (IDs) in residential accommodation (mainly National Health Service trusts), and a supplementary collection of data on service utilization and costs (for a subsample of 930 clients). The clients were classified, according to their needs benefit groups (BGs), and the services which they used were classified in terms of coherence as likely packages of care and similar consumption of resources as resource groups (RGs). It proved possible to construct nine BGs and 96 possible RGs which had both intuitive meaning and explanatory power. Statistical analysis showed that the resulting BGs and RGs are meaningful ways of classifying ID and challenging behaviour needs and costs.