How To … make sure your services are working well

Work on outcomes is currently high on the voluntary sector agenda. Outcomes are the changes, benefits, learning or other effects that happen as a result of an organisation's activities. They can affected individuals and organisations.

Central government is increasingly focused on performance management in the voluntary sector and funders are also demanding more information on outcomes – all good reasons to take up outcome management.

Benefits
Outcome management involves collecting information on outcomes and using it to develop and improve services for users. It can help organisations:

• make services more effective
  
• improve morale by showing progress
  
• be more accountable to stakeholders
  
• raise funds and report to funders.

Outcome management need not take up a lot of extra time. Its tools are often very similar to those used by homelessness workers. Casework sessions often include a discussion of user needs and progress towards meeting them. Many organisations have combined casework and outcome tools, thus streamlining data collection.

This focus on outcomes is consistent with the voluntary sector's ethos of enabling clients to make improvements in their lives. Without finding out whether changes have been achieved, it is impossible to know whether we have been successful. It could even be argued that there are ethical reasons to track work outcomes: the alternative might be subjecting vulnerable people to services that don't work. Outcome management is almost certainly here to stay. The challenge is to find simple and meaningful ways to measure the benefits.

Made to measure
Over the past two years, Charities Evaluation Services has been delivering "Impact Through Outcomes", a management training and support programme on behalf of the London Housing Foundation. More than 220 people from London's single homelessness agencies have attended the programme to help them identify and measure work outcomes.

Training his organised by agency type, with sessions being run for day centres and hostels, for example. Participants have been encouraged to attend with colleagues to maximise learning and increase the chances of later implementation. People attending have also been able to access one-to-one support from CES trainers and consultants.

Training has been very successful. Internal evaluation by CES has revealed high levels of user satisfaction and significant organisational change. Some have modified existing systems to encompass outcome measurement; others have implemented entirely new systems. Some have involved users and other key stakeholders in the process. A recent external evaluation by consultant David Carrington also concluded that the programme was "an undisputed success". Organisations are using the information collected by their outcomes systems to develop and improve services.

In terms of homelessness services, outcomes for users can include improved confidence, an increased ability to deal with service providers, even finding a home. Changes can be small but significant: for example, one organisation found that staff were spending a lot of time filling out benefits forms for users, leaving little time for other work. Practices were changed to enable users to fill out their own forms.

Another organisation has undertaken more radical changes, restructuring one of their key services after discovering that intended outcomes were not being met.

In both cases, practices have changed to achieve desired user outcomes.

Phase one of the training programme ended on a high note with a conference, The Outcomes of Experience, on 11 December 2003. More than 120 people attended. Nine separate agencies explained their own experience of implementing outcomes systems – "warts and all". The LHF will shortly be announcing phase two.

The conference was also used to launch a publication called Managing Outcomes: A Guide for Homelessness Organisations. This provides practical advice and could also be of interest to a wider audience.

Over the past two years the level of interest in and knowledge of outcome management has increased dramatically. We're looking forward to the day when all agencies feel able to describe their work in terms of client outcomes as easily as services provided.