In November 2005,
Communities and Local Government (then ODPM) announced in its Supporting People consultation paper that it intended to move towards an outcomes approach to the monitoring of the Supporting People programme. It also made clear that it was not sure what this would look like in practice and made an open invitation for suggestions.
At this point the
London Housing Foundation had four years of experience of supporting service providers in taking an outcomes approach and had a considerable body of knowledge and tools to call on.
The Foundation commissioned
Triangle Consulting, which has delivered the majority of its programme, to propose a national approach to Supporting People outcomes that would provide the necessary information at all levels without anyone drowning in new forms and administration.
Finding the right formula
It soon became apparent that gaining an understanding of what an outcomes approach means for providers was only part of the picture. Developing a national outcomes approach to Supporting People meant finding a formula that would reconcile the overlapping but different needs of providers, commissioners and central government – without creating a web of bureaucracy so thick as to strangle the actual provision of services. The formula that was needed was one that would:
- Enable providers to monitor the outcomes of their services in a way that was meaningful to workers and clients, and provide information that would enable the service to learn from its successes and failures to improve services
- Enable local authorities to assess service performance and take an overview of the achievements of Supporting People within their area
- Enable CLG to assess local authority performance and take an overview nationally of the achievements of Supporting People – particularly to demonstrate the value of the programme to the Treasury
One difficulty in designing a national approach to meet these different needs lay in deciding where to allow freedom for services and authorities to do things in their own way, and where to define from the centre how things should be done.
The advantage of freedom is that it allows for creativity, local ownership and tailoring approaches to local needs. The advantage of defining things from the centre is creating consistency which allows for comparison and aggregation of data and avoids complexity.
There were particular concerns from service providers that the imposition of a national approach to measuring outcomes at service level could undermine the existing initiatives of providers to measure outcomes, which were already delivering considerable benefits. But there was also concern that without a national approach, local authorities would all develop their own outcome frameworks, creating an unmanageable web of monitoring demands for providers working in more than one authority.
Working towards a shared approach
Despite all the fears and concerns, a shared framework did emerge. At a national level, the process included:
- The London Housing Foundation submission to the CLG in response to its original consultation paper identified the different needs of the CLG, local authorities and service providers and made recommendations as to how they should be met. It focussed particularly on the needs of service providers and . This was the only paper on the table at the first CLG outcomes meeting in early 2006
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The CLG the convened a working group on outcomes, including representatives of all nine local authority regions and of provider organisations, including SITRA and the National Housing Federation. Representing the London housing Foundation, Triangle Consulting was invited to join the working group to contribute their outcomes expertise and from what the Foundation had learnt through its Impact through Outcomes Programme in the homelessness sector. Triangle was an active member of the group from when it first met in May 2006 to the final meeting in the autumn 2007
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The CLG originally identified the five high level outcomes for the programme and then the CLG Outcomes Working Group discussed and agreed the 14 priority outcomes within those five areas and developed a national outcomes form for services - one for short term services and one for long term.
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This process benefited from a pilot project in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, initiated by the London Housing Foundation in order to develop a practical outcomes approach for commissioners and service providers at a local level. This project was facilitated by Triangle and learning from it fed directly in to discussions at the CLG Outcomes Working Group.
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Once drafted, the CLG Outcomes Forms were piloted twice, with a short pilot during December 2006 and longer pilot in the spring of 2007, with the short term form ready for roll-out at the end of May 2007.
Combined with the use of providers own distance travelled tools and the national basket of possible additional indicators, these strands have come together to create a coherent
framework which currently has the backing of CLG, and the majority of local authorities and service providers – all of whom see it as addressing their needs and avoiding the worst of their concerns.
In London, 27 of the 33 local authorities have signed up to the approach and nationally 124 of 128 authorities responding to a CLG survey indicated that they were signed up.
Read our outline of the National Supporting People Outcomes Framework
Download a PDF containing the background information on this page and our outline of the National Supporting People Outcomes Framework
Author: Joy MacKeith and Sara Burns
Date: 21 June 2007