Care Home Visits Distributor

Topic: Distributors
Path: configs/2021/distributors/care_home_visits_distributor.yaml

Overview

Links households of care home residents to the care home as a leisure venue, so that household members may visit. For each resident already placed in a care home, multiplier households in the same geographical area are linked to the venue under activity_map["leisure"].

Identified by distributor_type: "resident_linked" — a distinct loader class (ResidentLinkedDistributor) from the standard venue distributor.

Keys

Key	Description
`distributor_name`	Arbitrary label used in logs
`distributor_type`	Must be `"resident_linked"`
`target_venue_type`	Venue type to link visitors to
`resident_subset`	Subset name identifying residents already in the venue
`subset_key`	Subset name assigned to visiting household members
`activity_map_key`	Key written to `person.activity_map`
`link_level`	Unit of linking: `"household"` or `"person"`
`multiplier`	Visitor units linked per resident
`geography_level`	Geography level used when batching venue–household matching
`visitor_eligibility`	Filters restricting which households are eligible to visit
`settings`	Logging and batch geography level

Core linking keys

distributor_type: "resident_linked"
target_venue_type: "care_home"
resident_subset: "resident"
subset_key: "visitor"
activity_map_key: "leisure"
link_level: "household"
multiplier: 1
geography_level: "MGU"

The distributor iterates care homes, reads the resident_subset to count how many residents are present, then links multiplier visitor units per resident from households in the same geography_level area. link_level: "household" links the entire household — all members are added to the venue's visitor subset and receive the care home under activity_map["leisure"]. Setting link_level: "person" links individuals rather than households. multiplier may be a non-integer; fractional parts are applied probabilistically (e.g. 1.5 gives each resident a 50% chance of attracting a second household).

`visitor_eligibility`

visitor_eligibility:
  global_filters:
    - attribute: "residence.type"
      value: "household"
      type: "categorical"
    - attribute: "residence.properties.original_pattern"
      values:
        - ">=2 >=0 2 0"
        - "1 >=0 2 0"
        - "0 0 2 0"
        - "0 0 0 2"
        # ... (full list in config)
      type: "categorical"

Filters which households are eligible to be linked as visitors. residence.type: "household" excludes communal residence types. residence.properties.original_pattern restricts linking to household compositions that are likely to include family members of care home residents — families with children, households with young adults, and adult-only households. The pattern strings follow the household composition encoding defined in allocation_strategy.yaml.

`settings`

settings:
  verbose: true
  batch_geo_level: "MGU"

batch_geo_level controls the geographic unit at which venue–household pairing is batched. "MGU" (Middle Geographical Unit) is appropriate for care homes, which draw visitors from a broader area than a single small geo unit.