A new questionnaire aims to make it easier for councils to justify funding for social care jobs on an economic basis.

Developed by the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent, the questionnaire is one of the first pieces of work to be published as part of the School for Social Care Research (SSCR) programme launched last May.

The "Measuring Outcomes for Public Service Users toolkit" was designed to help commissioners and providers of social care services to measure the value for money of existing programmes. Using service user responses, the toolkit aims to provide an idea of improvements in outcomes to the level of social care provided at the frontline rather than through top-down targets.

Mainly aimed at adult social care interventions, the toolkit will include services such as those provided by the work of domiciliary care jobs and residential care. As one of the largest areas of public spending, the social care sector is under pressure to provide concrete evidence of cost-effectiveness.

Martin Knapp, director of the SSCR programme, has said that this pressure has increased dramatically because of the economic downturn. Speaking after the SSCR's first annual conference, Mr Knapp said: "If social care can't demonstrate that it's cost effective and achieving good outcomes for communities it will become extremely difficult for the sector to protect its funding."

Barring a major change in policy by an incoming government, further work on improvements to social care from the SSCR will be published over the next four years. When it was formed as part of the National Institute for Health Research, the SSCR was given £15m in funding to spend between 2010 and 2014.