We’ve been continuing with our review of the Empowerment Star and have had some fantastic opportunities to learn and add to the wealth of research that is being conducted by the team to update this Star.
We were really excited to spend time with the Bath-based charity VOICES, a charity founded by women with lived experience, dedicated to providing recovery support and advocacy for people affected by domestic abuse.
Our Product Lead, Harriet Wills, spoke with VOICES’ lived experience group and held in-depth discussions on the work so far to update the Empowerment Star. A huge thank you to all at VOICES for sharing their invaluable insights and experience.
Our Research Analyst, Dr Anna Good, alongside Harriet, have also been conducting an Equality Impact Assessment to help ensure the review makes the Star as inclusive as possible. To feed into this and help our ongoing learning across the Triangle team were delighted to attend two incredibly informative training sessions with charities Galop and Safer Places.
Galop is an LGBT+ anti-abuse charity who work with and for LGBT+ victims and survivors of abuse and violence. We spent time learning more about the unique experiences of LGBT+ victims and survivors of abuse and the intersectional challenges they may face. Safer Places delivers specialist support services to adults and children who have experienced domestic abuse and shared their knowledge of culturally diverse communities’ experiences of domestic abuse and the additional barriers they face to access support services.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to Galop and Safer Places for delivering such impactful and engaging training.
We were excited to share our progress with the Empowerment Star reference group and are now looking ahead to consolidating our research and finalising the Empowerment Star review. We will be launching the new and updated Star in the new year.
Farida Thomson is a Trainer and Implementation Lead at Triangle. She previously worked as a geography teacher and an Early Help Worker for a local authority in London, UK.
Using the Family Star Plus and My Star in practice
I love this job as it enables me to merge all my passions together. It allows me to apply my previous experience using the Star in a practitioner’s capacity to create really meaningful training sessions.
The first thing that stood out to me when I first began using the Star is that it is a visual tool that’s simple for all to understand and engage with. Traditionally, we were used to working with assessments that contained reams and reams of paragraphs, or tick-box exercises that provided little value or insight. The outcome areas on the Star were relevant and made sense to us as practitioners and the families that we were supporting, and this helped us to get to know our clients and their world in a holistic way. The Journey of Change and the ability to have an open conversation using a strengths-based approach made it even more valuable.
How did I use the Outcomes Star in my practice?
We used it with all of our families. The Family Star Plus was used to capture the parental voice and My Star to the capture child’s voice. The Star was a part of our assessment process and would have to be completed in the first four weeks, with reviews held every 12 weeks. If families didn’t want to engage or stopped engaging, we used a worker-only Star; we did not use the retrospective Star option.
What affect did the Outcomes Star have?
It gave our clients a voice. Many said that they felt like we cared about them as a whole person and not just the issue they were presenting with. Many people said it was the first time they were able to really speak about issues they had hidden as either no one wanted to hear about them. or they were not asked about them as it was not their presenting issue. I remember one client describing it as “freedom to talk about me without feeling judged”.
As I began completing more Stars with my families, I realised how versatile and user-friendly it was. I could literally make it bespoke to each person I was supporting while still working within a framework that would provide consistency.
Some of the best Stars I’ve completed have been in a Children’s Centre setting. This enabled me to take the parent/carer out of the chaos of their home environment and allow them to feel safe to have an open and honest conversation. I’ve completed Stars in coffee shops, sitting in a park or during a drive.
Getting it wrong/right…
Initially we didn’t use the Star in a conversational way and there were a lot of 10’s. This demonstrated to us that we needed to change our approach in how to discuss things with our clients. It reiterated the importance of using the User Guide and being able to get accurate readings, as many staff members had forgotten the User Guide existed. We had Star Champions who ran surgeries and gave in-house training on difficult areas or top tips on hot topics. We also evaluated the barriers that were preventing staff from completing the Star in an effective way. Staff reported that they found it a burden to do both Outcomes Star completion and the Initial Assessment. We then added the outcome areas to case notes so that there was not a repetition of work and all elements linked together.
We also began to share the Outcomes Star during Team Around the Family (TAF) meetings using an multi-disciplinary team approach so that no one agency was working in isolation. The additional support, guidance and making it fit with the existing systems and processes that we had made an immense difference in productivity and accuracy.
How can the Outcomes Star data can be used?
The data helped us to identify areas of strength and weakness and gaps in the service or local area. Housing was a key need in our local area as there were over 4,000 people on the temporary housing list, however we couldn’t provide our clients with accommodation. We could, however, help them to look at housing options both in the social and private sector and prepare them to bid. Once we were clear about our boundaries, it made our job easier and our clients’ expectations more realistic.
Another gap in both our service and external services was that there was a 16-week waiting list for clients to access counselling. We identified that without some coping strategies, our clients were unable to make changes in key areas such as putting in a routine. I then trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and shared my learning with my colleagues so that we could provide short-term support and fill that gap.
The strengths of our service demonstrated that we were making immense changes in areas of routine and boundaries, and the Star helped us to evidence the changes.
Why should you use the Outcomes Star?
The Star really is a great way to build a relationship, have open and honest conversations and empower the people that we are supporting. The Star is something that we do with our clients and not to them, and this approach itself enables them to make long-lasting changes in their lives.
With our Integration Pilot well underway, we’ve got some news about its future as well as some reflections on what we’ve learnt so far.
Extending Integration Pilot for Outcomes Star Online to December 2024
To ensure we can fully trial the API endpoints and put our design decisions to the test in as many different scenarios as possible, we are extending our Integration Pilot through 2024.
This will mean organisations using the Outcomes Star Online can access and use our Partner API free of charge through 2024, to integrate with any other primary software they use.
A recap on our Partner API for Outcomes Star Online
Outcomes Star Online’s Partner API went live in April 2023, and since then we’ve had conversations with around 50 different organisations about how it can work for their practitioners, other stakeholders and of course, the people they support.
The design of our Partner API is based on these desired outcomes:
Any and all primary software that can use APIs can use our API.
Outcomes Stars are completed on our platform using our visual and engaging interface aligned with best Star practice.
Data-entry and login duplication is reduced as much as possible to make life easier for practitioners.
We support a single point of truth and easy access to key Outcomes Star data within the primary software.
We plan to continue to develop and expand our Partner API – in this initial stage, we have 3 key features available, plus Single Sign On for both Microsoft and Google (NB SSO will be launched separately for all Outcomes Star organisations in January 2024 – watch this space!):
For more information on what is available as part of our Integration Pilot and how you can get involved, see: www.outcomesstar.org.uk/software
Summary of progress so far
With many early-stage conversations underway, we have made some exciting progress including:
A sandbox build with a person-centred care planning software provider and a dynamic Northern Ireland-based charity
A sandbox build with a team of developers making a custom solution for an innovative education charity
Analysis and planning projects with a number of leading UK national charities, mostly working with their own custom software or Microsoft Dynamics platforms
We are hoping to onboard more organisations into the sandbox and link up to the Live environment in early 2024.
What’s next for Outcomes Star Online integration
Interoperability is a completely new area for our organisation, and we’re still learning about its challenges and opportunities!
For example, there are lots of questions we are still asking ourselves and looking to learn more about:
Can we develop and maintain ‘middleware’ solutions that remove the burden of custom code on the primary software/client organisation side – for example, for ‘enterprise’ platforms like Salesforce and Dynamics, and for the bigger sector-specialist platforms that provide their own APIs?
For UK NHS settings, should we be focusing on direct integration with individual pieces of software used in a region, or should we be focusing on Shared Care Record integration?
Our current endpoints don’t include an individuals Star data in ‘raw data’ format (it is available in a user-friendly PDF or in aggregated data formats.) How can we provide this in a way that adds value and is usable by different primary software?
If you are working on your own interoperability opportunities and challenges, or if you have any insight or information you could share about the above, please do get in touch.
We are sometimes asked whether changes in Star readings actually reflect the changes that occur during service provision. We have three responses to this: the first two are based on the practices we have in place for the development of new Stars and for training and implementation of the Star. The third is to present the research evidence that the Star readings can be applied accurately and that readings correlate with other measures in the expected way.
Star Development
New versions of the Star are created alongside managers and practitioners to ensure the Journey of Change captures key changes occurring for those using services.
Pilot data is statistically analysed to check that the scales are sensitive enough to detect change.
Service users and practitioners provide end-of-pilot feedback about the extent to which the Star captures the changes made.
Training and Implementation
For the Star to accurately reflect change, practitioners should be well-trained with ongoing support to continue using it well. This is why training is mandatory, we provide free CPD for licensed trainers and encourage refresher training, regular supervision, and auditing.
Research Evidence
Convergent validity: Star readings have been shown to correlate with other validated measures in our own, as well as in external peer-reviewed research.
Predictive validity: Star readings, and change in Star readings, predict hard outcomes such as securing accommodation, employment, and school absenteeism
Inter-rater reliability: different practitioners are able to consistently assign Star readings
We are keen to conduct further analyses of the relationship between Star readings and other measures, so please get in touch if you have linked data and are interested in us exploring it.
To read our three page briefing providing a more detailed version of the above, please download it here (PDF).
Do you work with the Empowerment Star? We’re keen to hear your experience and insights to help us review this Star and improve it for everyone. Take the survey or join our focus groups to share your valuable feedback.
The Empowerment Star is our Outcomes Star for women who have experienced or been the victims of domestic violence. It is designed to be used within women’s refuges or outreach and social services and focuses on areas that are important in helping women who have experienced abuse at home to embark on a new life. We produced it in 2011 with collaboration from Eaves Housing and funding from London Councils.
Why we’re reviewing this Star
An important part of our work is keeping Stars up-to-date, easy to use and as impactful and efficient as possible.
Since the Empowerment Star was launched in 2011, there have been many changes in the sector. We have learned a lot more about the need to be trauma-informed, foster inclusivity and better meet the unique needs of practitioners and the women they support. So it’s important that we review the Empowerment Star in light of this and ensure it is the best it can be.
Creating and reviewing our Stars is a collaborative effort – we couldn’t do it without the input and expertise of clients, organisations, and practitioners who use the Star. With your experiences, ideas and feedback, we can make it as useful as possible for you and the people you support.
Share your feedback
If you are a practitioner or manager who uses the Empowerment Star and are willing to help us improve it, simply fill in this short survey and tell us what you think.
We’re also inviting you to join one of our focus groups on 22nd and 23rd November 2023 so we can hear feedback directly. Simply sign up for the date that suits you. The focus groups are on UK time, but if you use the Empowerment Star outside of the UK and would like to join, please tell us about yourself here.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you and improving this valuable tool together. If you’d like to find out more or want to email your feedback, contact us or email sara@triangleconsulting.co.uk directly.
When we launched the new and improved Outcomes Star Online platform in 2020, we were aware that what we were launching was a Minimum Viable Product.
We knew it was only the start of where we could use digital technology to help people get the most out of the Outcomes Star.
Following a year of migrating over 1000 organisations from the old platform to the new, we’ve been constantly moving forward with the platform, working closely with our technology partners QES, including:
Filling in gaps that we weren’t able to get to in the initial development (eg action plan PDF downloads)
Introducing features to support better management of data (eg configurable practitioner permissions and restricted access to records, and depersonalisation of dormant records)
Ensuring a strong foundation of compliance for information governance, cyber security and clinical safety (eg new IG statements for UK and Australia, and bringing in a Clinical Safety Officer to set up our Clinical Risk Management System).
We’ve also been working on 2 big projects – integration, and an overhaul of the ‘Live Completion’ feature. Here’s an update on those projects and some of the things we’ve learnt along the way.
Integration
We are clear that the role of Outcomes Star Online is not to be a fully customisable, comprehensive case management system or electronic patient record system. Although for some organisations it may be their central record system, our focus is purely on the Outcomes Star and supporting best practice use across our client organisations.
We have also learnt the hard way that although on the surface it seems simple to allow organisations to build their own digital versions of Stars, and in some cases works well, often it is very difficult to achieve a user experience that matches up to best practice and supports the values underpinning the Star.
Therefore, we knew when launching the new platform that we absolutely had to offer integration with other systems – but at the time, we didn’t really know how to do that. We didn’t know what kind of integration people wanted, or what technology the other systems needed to be ‘talked to’, or where to draw the lines around what should happen within Outcomes Star Online and what we should support in other systems. With over 1000 organisations using all sorts of software and managing that software in different ways, we had to decide where to start – with something that delivered a lot for one setting, or something that delivered something basic but for as many different circumstances as possible.
Following a period of research, design and development, we were delighted to launch our Partner API and our Integration Pilot in April 2023, delivering a ‘Phase 1’ of universally useful endpoints designed to reduce duplication of data entry for practitioners and support a ‘single point of truth’ in primary systems.
Alongside the more technical side of the API development, we also knew we wanted to continue to improve the user experience around completing Stars.
For the last year we’ve been doing some exciting user research and design with Usertopia to look at the ‘Live Star Completion’ feature the pages designed to be shared with someone being supported to complete a Star collaboratively without paper. Here you can see an image of one of our potential alternative designs in action.
With a focus on accessibility, as well as on supporting best Star practice, we’ve uncovered some useful learnings, including:
Lack of wifi when out and about prevents people from using the feature, so an offline solution would be valuable
The lack of imagery and the volume of text on the screen all in one go makes it harder to digest
Rather than just completing a Star, people would like to be able to complete action plans collaboratively and look back over completed Stars to show the visual of change over time
We’re just starting to move from design into development, working closely with Usertopia and QES and planning to collaborate with our research community of Outcomes Star Online practitioners to test out our plans as we go. If you’re interested in finding out more or helping us with this important development, sign up here.
Onwards and upwards
As well as the big projects above we’re committed to continually improving the user experience and technology of Outcomes Star Online. If you have any feedback or requests, or any questions or issues with the platform, please contact us on support@staronline.org.uk.
We’ve been noticing an increase in enquiries about using the Star in children’s social care, which may reflect upcoming changes in the requirements for outcomes measurement and keywork in this sector.
The Department for Education’s recently consulted on a new children’s social care national framework and indicators dashboard, and we were pleased to contribute to this. We welcomed the move towards more person-centred and collaborative care planning and outcomes measurement – the aims set out in the framework being very well aligned with our own (see our Enabling help report). However, we fed back our hope that the final version will include a broader range of indicators and more practical guidance about how to achieve the aims, for example, collaborative assessments to build strong relationships.
The themes of hearing the voices of people being supported, tailoring support and building trusting relationships were also very prominent in the Department for Education ‘Guide to the Supported Accommodation Regulations including Quality Standards’ for looked after children and care leavers aged 16 and 17, which was published in March. Since all providers now have to register with Ofsted and indicate how they will comply with the regulations, we have been working on a guidance document to explain how the Outcomes Star can help with this and how specific versions map across to the principles and quality standards.
Download the How To here. Contact us for more information or to share any learnings about using the Star in these settings.
Joy MacKeith shares her thoughts after the inaugural Towards Relational Public Services (TRePubS) Conference
How do you deliver public services that are relational – services that recognise and respond to the unique needs and circumstances of each individual? That was the topic of the conference ‘Towards Relational Public Services’ that I have just had the pleasure to participate in.
Sam Game and I gave a workshop which explored how the Outcomes Star helps to make ‘Enabling Help’ a reality in practice. Working in a relational way is one of the six core principles of Enabling Help, Triangle’s blueprint for effective services.
Sam, who leads the implementation of the Parent and Baby Star in Health Visiting services in Warwickshire, described how using the Star has helped them work in a more relational, collaborative and strengths-based way. Parents have responded incredibly well. They are much clearer about the health visitor’s role and they love the way that Star helps them see what is going well as well as where they have needs. And it isn’t just the parents. It has also helped commissioners to understand and value the service.
Our workshop was one of more than 40 sessions which took place over two days at Newcastle Business School – part of Northumbria University.
For me the highlight was Mark Smith’s presentation on service transformation work in Gateshead. He described how they have implemented an approach to working with people with complex needs in which there are only two rules: ‘do no harm’ and ‘stay legal’. In this ‘liberated method’ case workers have a low caseload and there are no limits on how long they can work with someone or what kind of support can be provided. And case workers have budgets and the discretion to spend money to help solve pressing problems.
What I loved about this approach was that the bureaucracy was stripped out, giving workers the chance to do simple things that could make a big difference and avert much greater problems down the line.
Mark is part of a growing movement of managers, practitioners and academics who are challenging the orthodoxies of New Public Management (sometimes described as the 3 Ms – Markets, Metrics and Management). They are making the case that outcomes emerge from many interacting factors and therefore cannot be ‘delivered’ or dictated. In this complex environment, learning rather than prescription and control is the most effective management strategy. And it makes more sense for commissioners to take a relational approach and to hold service providers accountable for learning rather than targets. This new approach is called Human Learning Systems.
Toby Lowe, Visiting Professor of Public Management and the Centre for Public Impact closed the conference with a call to action – for all of us who want to see services that are more relational, responsive and effective to come together and work with a coalition of the willing to create a paradigm shift in public management. It is an exciting vision, and one that I think the Outcomes Star, a tool with flexible, relational working at its core, can play a role in realising.
Joy MacKeith, Co-creator of Outcomes Star
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Watch Joy’s conversation with Toby Lowe about the synergies between Enabling Help and Human Learning Systems
All local authorities delivering Supporting Families must have an approved Outcome Plan setting out their family level outcomes against headline objectives set out in the programme guidance.
Since the start of the supporting families programme (formerly called the ‘Troubled families programme’), many local authorities have been using the Family Star Plus as part of evidencing outcomes within their approved Outcomes Plans.
This Family Star Plus was developed specifically to be aligned with the programme’s objectives, and the new Supporting Families outcomes framework was taken into account when creating the recently published 2nd edition of this version of the Star.
The new framework identifies ‘Practitioner and/or self-assessment’ and ‘Validated outcome measures’ as part of the evidence within all of the headline areas, and the Outcomes Star, while collaboratively completed, fits within this category. The validation of the Family Star Plus as an outcomes measure, including evidence of ‘inter-rater reliability’ and ‘predictive validity’ is reported in a recent peer-reviewed journal article (Good & MacKeith, 2021).
You can download our guidance on how to use the Family Star Plus (2nd Ed.) within the new Supporting Families framework here.
Triangle developed the first Family Star in 2010, in collaboration with Camden Council in London as part of their innovative focus on outcome measurement. It was the 4th Outcomes Star Triangle developed and brought its own engaging challenges. In particular, the Family Star was to be completed with a parent, but the beneficiary was their child or children.
Whilst keeping a clear focus on the intended outcome – that children could thrive – the Star needed to recognise that, where parents face challenges in their lives, those needed to be addressed for their own well-being as well as to benefit their children.
Parents with lived experience helped to shape the Family Stars, based on the process of change they had gone through with support from the service.
Soon after the original Family Star was published, the government in England and Wales announced significant new investment in supporting vulnerable families – initially called the Troubled Families Initiative. This initiative included a focus on understanding and measuring outcomes for families, and the Star was perfect as a tool for doing that – or almost. To align even better with the framework, it needed more focus on parents, particularly on the parent’s own well-being and on helping parents into work, where appropriate.
In response, Triangle collaborated with Leicestershire County Council to create the Family Star Plus in 2012. This has since become one of the most widely used of the family of Outcomes Stars, particularly by local authorities in England.
Triangle then worked with collaborators in Scotland to produce materials which mapped the Family Star to SHANARRI, the Scottish Government outcomes framework for children and families.
Since these early Family Stars, Triangle has developed many more versions for children and families. My Star for children is widely used to give the voice of the child alongside the Family Star Plus or Family Star. There is also the lighter touch Family Star Early Years and then the Family Star (relationships), for use where the main focus is on the relationship between parents, including with mediation and looking after the child’s well-being in family breakdown. Triangle also developed more Stars for children and young people – preview versions of all of these and more are available to download from the website.
Triangle is committed to keeping the suite of Outcomes Stars up to date – we invest part of the Star Licence fee in this – and have a robust process for reviewing existing Stars and creating new editions. We used this to review the Family Stars in 2021-2022, as described in our previous blog and detailed in a development summary that will be published with the new editions in April. The result is new editions that are more person centred, accessible and trauma informed.
If you are a current user of the Family Star or Family Star Plus (practitioner or manager), please register to attend the launch webinar event. If you can’t participate on the day, please register anyway, as we will share the recording and all new resources with you. you.
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