In May 2001 the
London Housing Foundation held a consultation conference with over 30 agencies tackling homelessness in London, to identify priorities for its future programme of support.
This conference highlighted the need for agencies to develop a better understanding of how to monitor and use outcomes information – for the benefit of their clients and also to aid reporting to funders. Thus the Foundation's outcomes programme was launched.
We commissioned
Charities Evaluation Services to provide a series of two-day training events on outcomes that saw over 220 people from 50 agencies gain a much greater understanding and practical knowledge. This was backed up by a programme of technical assistance and consultant support to many of those agencies, to help them address how to apply an outcomes framework in their work.
In December 2003 this experience was brought together in the first of our outcomes conferences, at which it launched '
Managing Outcomes: A Guide for Homelessness Organisations'. Commissioned by the Foundation, this guide offers an introduction to working with outcomes along with tools to help agencies adopt the approach. It was written by Sara Burns and Sally Cupitt and published by Charities Evaluation Service.
From 2004 the London Housing Foundation extended its support for homelessness agencies to develop effective outcome management systems. Fifteen agencies have since received support to adopt an outcomes approach. St Mungo's, one of the earlier agencies supported, was funded to commission Triangle Consulting to develop a tool that would enable them to measure the outcomes of their work with homeless people. An earlier version of the Outcomes Star was the end result.
From 2005 the programme also looked at the information management needs for an outcomes monitoring system. Starting with a market research study, to identify what information management systems agencies were using, this later led to a guide for agencies of what to look for when considering such a system.
In 2005/6 the Foundation commissioned Triangle Consulting to facilitate a 'Star Users Group', to bring together agencies that were using the Outcomes Star and to identify how it could be refined and developed for greater impact. The Foundation subsequently commissioned Triangle Consulting to use the learning from this process to develop an improved version of the the Outcomes Star, that measures ten outcome areas and is substantially more service user friendly. We are discovering that this version is attractive to a wide range of agencies, within and beyond homelessness. The Outcomes Star has been further developed to the Outcomes Star Collection, a set of guides and training materials on using the Star, that will help ensure that this tool is highly effective, both for casework with service users and as an outcome monitoring tool.
In 2006 the Foundation commissioned Triangle Consulting to put together a response to the ODPM's (now CLG's) consultation regarding the strategy for Supporting People. Triangle Consulting to put together a response to the Draft London Housing Strategy. Outcomes were mentioned throughout the document. Triangle Consulting was then invited to represent the Foundation on the CLG Outcomes Working Group and was an active and valued member of the group throughout its 18 months from May 2007 to September 2007, advising on all stages of the development of the CLG National Outcomes Framework.
Triangle Consulting and Charities Evaluation Service have been our successful partners in delivering support to homelessness agencies to take an outcomes approach.
Author: Kevin Ireland
Date: 20 December 2006
More: Outcomes Star, understanding outcomes
Last updated by Sara Burns, 9 October 2007