Humbercare supports over 180 service users in their own homes, covering all ages and including services for drug and alcohol misuse clients, probation/offenders, young people and others.
They have been using the Outcomes Star for over a year and here senior manager Mike Mercer describes the process of implementation and explains why Humbercare is a “massive fan” of the Star:
For us the motivation for using the Outcomes Star was to raise our standards internally.
We wanted to enable staff to use a tool that was easy and which would benefit clients because it was useful and productive in support planning.
We decided we would rather go with something tried and tested than develop our own. We looked at the Star and decided it was good.
We took it to our senior team.
They were dubious at first but came round.
We then had a short training day and discussed it – actually more a shared learning process than training.
Initial resistance was soon overcome
We have our own internal assessment paperwork, support plans and exit forms plus the star. There was some initial resistance from key workers and we struggled with data analysis to start with.
However we are a learning organisation and the managers here embrace change.
The staff know it’s not going anywhere; that the Star is here to stay.
They also know it makes their job easier.
Their resistance was not major anyway and they have not been overloaded with new initiatives in recent years, so introducing the star was not that difficult.
We absolutely love it!
For example, the manager of the young people service says it is a fantastic tool to illustrate, motivate and demonstrate change.
We are a massive fan.
We have seen benefits for service users and workers through improved key work, line managers in supervision, for senior management and in our reputation with our funders.
In keywork, the Outcomes Star has resulted in staff raising their game
It is more transparent for staff to see a person has gone from A to B.
From a manager’s point of view, you can see that the service is working.
You can see the individual benefit; you have the starting point and the end point.
All the feedback has been positive.
People can see the changes.
It does not promote competition between staff but makes them more proactive and makes them more aware of support planning and reviewing.
We are ready for commissioners to scrutinise our outcomes
We’re just in the process of putting the star information on a database that we have put together ourselves.
We have already used the data for benchmarking internally between our services, but this will make it much easier and also enable us to report the data to our funders.
Hull City Council is very impressed we are using the star – they gave us a level A in our QAF.
We work across three local authorities and they all ask for outcomes data and are interested in distance travelled outcomes.
Outcomes have always been talked about but not really been scrutinised – that scrutiny is coming and now we have got more than a year of results and we are ready for it.
Looking ahead, some of the local authorities here have decided on their new national indicators and others not.
However, we know we will be able to demonstrate our outcomes and are not concerned about the move to NIs.
The star is a good tool for us to personalise outcomes data and demonstrate our outcomes.
It can give both the flavour and more detail.
We need to ensure consistency and good practice in using the star
The next steps for us are further staff consultation on the benefits of using the Star and to ensure that all staff are using it in the same way so that there is consistency across projects.
This ongoing consultation is particularly important as the Star is always done off-site due to the nature of our work.