A member of each organisation must take on the role of corporate administrator and in doing so, they agree to the following conditions.

These conditions are emailed to the member of staff, who can opt out of using the system at this point, in which case their organisation will be removed from the system. They can, if they wish, address the essential matters and then re-register.

Outcomes Star System - conditions of use

In signing up to the system, you agree, on behalf of your organisation to the following:

1. Star Charts added to the system will only be those using the original version of the Outcomes Star or the new Outcomes Star published by Homeless Link in October 2008:
   
   If you are uncertain whether you are using the correct version, please contact Joanne Crellen.
   
2. To use personal identifiers that are anonymous and to store these in a locked cabinet.
3. To ensure staff user names and passwords are securely stored and are not accessible to service users – colleagues cannot share user names and passwords.
4. To gain formal consent from the service user before inputting any data on them into the system - responsibility for security of the information is with the agency and we cannot guarantee that the data will not be hacked – therefore it should all be confidential and anonymised
5. All staff who use the system should have undergone an induction to using the Outcomes Star and should have read both The Outcomes Star: User Guide and The Outcomes Star: Organisation Guide.
6. Staff who will use the system have been made aware of the Outcomes Star Collection and the Homeless Outcomes website where they can read FAQs and guidance on using the system
7. Staff will explain:
   1. Why the organisation is using the Star and what it is
   2. The Journey of Change
   3. The Ten Ladders
   4. How the Star Chart links to the service user’s action and/or support plan
      
8. That you, or a delegated colleague, will manage the following tasks for your organisation:
   1. To ensure the data added is accurate and to monitor your organisation's use of the system to ensure it is being used appropriately. Invalid use of the system, such as inaccurate Star Charts, will undermine the value of the reports for your organisation and the benchmarking reports for all organisations using the system
      
   2. To ensure the organisation is set up once on the system, with projects and departments used to separate data for different teams
   3. To understand the permissions of corporate admins, managers and key workers
   4. To add services and projects to the system
   5. To add managers and key workers (colleagues)
   6. To support staff to use the system where possible and to seek support if needed, yourself. If you need to support in order to answer a question, please contact Joanne Crellen.
      
   7. To encourage staff to give us feedback on the system and note any bugs they experience or ideas they have using the Feedback tab on every screen of the system. They can also vote for other people's suggestions - helping us to establish the priority for certain changes.
   8. The corporate admin understands that it is necessary for your organisation's data to be accessed by 'Super Admin' users for the purposes of protecting data quality and to enable technical support. These Super Admin users are based at Homeless Link, Triangle Consulting, Jellymould Creative and C4 Multimedia. Key worker names and service user IDs (anonymised by the organisation) are available to Super Admin users in order to provide technical support.
      
   9. Homeless Link will use the data gathered by the system to develop an evidence base of the effectiveness of key worker interventions. In order to achieve this, the quality of the data is vital and this is why we ask that all data added is real data for real clients, unless the user is signed on as a training user.
   10. Data added by a training user will be periodically removed from the system. It will not be included in reports.
       

The following are not conditions of use at this stage, though this may change,
but it is strongly recommended for every organisation using the Outcomes
Star System to do the following:

1. That the Key Worker Summary report, which shows Star Chart results for a single key worker, is not used as a means of managing performance in isolation.
   • If staff fear that they will be penalised should a client, or group of clients, experience a set-back, it may affect how accurately they record their score.
     
   • It can be used for fruitful discussions of caseload with the key worker’s manager or to investigate the need for further resources, training or support.
2. Train staff in using the Outcomes Star. A guide to providing in-house training is available from www.homelessoutcomes.org.uk.
3. That Star Charts are used in supervision
4. That they are part of client file auditing.
   

If you would like to recommend improvements to these conditions, please contact us.

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