Drive adult social care efficiencies in 2025 with ID verification technology

Local authorities are facing very challenging times as continued funding shortfalls place significant pressure on budgets. According to the Bennett Institute for Public Policy the majority of English councils are on the brink of financial collapse with local authorities facing a £9.3 billion deficit by 2026-7.

As a result, delivering efficiencies is key. Particularly when it comes to adult social care which takes the greatest share of a council’s budget, at around 39 pence in the pound 2023 – 24. A figure which is set to grow, with the Budget at the end of October promising increases to the national living wage and national insurance contributions.

Clean user contact data

The best place to start in driving efficiencies regarding checking the eligibility for adult social care is in the collection of accurate contact data from applicants. When contact information, such as name, address, email and phone number are accurate the verification process becomes more reliable. With this data ID verification technology can confidently cross-reference the provided information against official databases or other authoritative sources without discrepancies that could lead to false positives or negatives.

This is important to help avoid ‘misplaced’ spend on adult social care that should be funded by another organisation, and in preventing possible fraud. By maintaining clean and accurate contact data ID verification systems can more effectively identify suspicious activity and prevent fraudulent claims.

 Address verification

To deliver contact data quality it’s important to begin with address verification, to ensure the collection of a consistently accurate, standardised address. This approach is usually recognised as the foundation of contact data quality, because once you have access to an up-to-date address it makes it much easier to match and verify identities across multiple sources.

It’s particularly important to make sure addresses are accurate when around six million people in England and Wales move home every year.

Autocomplete or lookup technology

The best way to obtain accurate user addresses and other contact data is to use autocomplete or lookup technology. With address autocomplete tools it’s possible to deliver a properly formatted, correct address at the onboarding stage, when the user starts to input theirs. These services are valuable because around 20 percent of addresses entered online contain errors; these include spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, and incorrect postcodes, as well as incorrect email addresses and phone numbers, typically due to errors when typing contact information. Another benefit of the service is the number of keystrokes needed when entering an address is cut by up to 81 percent. This speeds up the onboarding process and enhances the whole experience.

 The good news is similar technology can be employed to deliver first point of contact verification across email and phone, so these important contact datasets can also be verified in real-time.

Data cleaning platform

Alternatively, use a scalable data cleaning software-as-a-service (SaaS) that can be simply accessed, and doesn’t require coding, integration or training to use, to deliver address and wider data quality in real-time across existing user databases. It can cleanse and correct contact data and match records, preventing duplication. A single, intuitive interface offers the opportunity for data standardisation, validation, and enrichment, ensuring high-quality contact information across numerous databases. It can deliver this with held data in batch and as new data is being collected. As well as SaaS, such service capabilities can alternatively be accessed via cloud-based API (application programming interface), Microsoft SQL Server or deployed on-premise.

Electronic ID verification technology

It’s not enough to only use data hygiene technologies to prevent possible ‘misplaced’ spending and fraud. Utilising an electronic identity verification (eIDV) platform to make sure the claimants are who they claim is vital. An automated tool such as this can be accessed via delivery mechanisms, including an “out-of-the-box” user interface with no integration required; or cloud API; and scaled up or down according to the needs of the users.

With these platforms being “always on” they are able to cross-check, in real-time, the names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers provided by applicants during remote onboarding. This delivers a great experience, while preventing fraud.

Sourcing an eIDV tool with access to billions of consumer and business records from reputable sources around the world, including government, utility and credit agencies, is advisable for the best outcome.

Employing such automated technology is considerably quicker, more accurate and cost effective for undertaking ID verification and preventing fraud when compared with manual checks. There’s no extra staffing or training costs, and there’s far less danger of human error when using this technology. Instead, those eligible for care are onboarded swiftly, ensuring they receive what they need quickly.

With local authorities focused on balancing the books stopping any ‘misplaced’ spending and avoiding fraud in the delivery of costly adult social care is vital in these challenging times. The answer, in 2025, is to have technology in place to ensure they are collecting clean contact data on citizens and undertaking the necessary electronic ID verification checks.