Month: June 2022

My Star – tell us what you think

Posted on by Outcomes Star

We are reviewing My Star and are keen to hear from people using it with children and families. Tell us about your experience using the tool – what works well? What needs to change to meet the current needs of the children you are working with. We appreciate changes that have happened in the last five years such as the pandemic since My Star was published in 2017.

Developing and reviewing the suite of over 40 Outcomes Stars is a dynamic process, and we rely on people sharing their experiences and suggestions so we can best respond to your current needs.

We invest part of the Star Licence fee in ongoing Star review and improvement and creating new resources, to keep the tools up to date, accessible and reliable.

Background

My Star is for children in vulnerable families or being looked after by foster carers or in a children’s home. It is mainly used with those aged 7-14 but can be used more broadly.

Triangle developed My Star in 2016-17 in collaboration with a range of family support workers and other professionals. The My Star collaborators included Family Action, Action for Children, Westminster Council and Coram, plus several smaller organisations through part-funding from the UK Government Department for Education Growing our Strengths programme.

Tell us what you think today – what works and what could be improved?

Sara Burns leads on the development of the Stars. Please contact us with your feedback and suggestions or arrange a call: sara@triangleconsulting.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

Guiding Stars: How the Outcomes Stars help build hope and self-esteem

Posted on by Outcomes Star

Having recently returned from a long holiday, I am re-engaging freshly with Triangle’s work, creating Stars, training and supporting people to use them well and sharing our wider vision of an enabling service delivery system.

Returning after a solo hiking along the beautiful Cleveland Way, I had the chance to see our work with fresh eyes, and ask myself the question, “After 20 years of working on the Outcomes Star, why does it still matter to me so much?”

The answer that came when I asked myself that question was this: Working with the Outcomes Star gives people access to a developmental framing of their situation. The Star presents their situation as a time of challenge, not a sign of failure. The fact that they need help is an opportunity for them to draw on their existing strengths and develop new ones rather than being a sign of weakness. For people who are so often seen as a set of problems, having access to this hopeful, growthful narrative really matters. It is a simple reframing but it can make all the difference.

The Star reflects the person’s life back to them; they see they are a traveller moving forwards on their journey in life, rather than someone who has come to a dead end. The endpoints or the tips on the Star point to the way things could be, and in some cases they show what is already working well, giving people something to celebrate as well as offering things to work towards.

Stars have always been a navigational guide and a symbol of hope. Outcomes Stars are aptly named because they do just that – offer hope and guide us in the right direction. They don’t tell us exactly how to get there or exactly what it will look like when we arrive. That is something only the person completing the Star can discover for themselves. But they do shine the light forwards and give us the self-belief and self-confidence to keep moving forwards toward a better life.

We all need to see ourselves as heroes in our own journey – facing challenges and setbacks, but achieving and finding a way through as well.

As I reflect on my 20 years helping guide Triangle through the many challenges and triumphs of our work, I feel proud to be able to play a part in helping others move forward on their life’s journey. Refreshed by my holiday I am as hopeful and excited as ever at the potential of the Outcomes Stars to support and embed an enabling approach to service delivery.

Joy MacKeith, Founding Director

To find out more about Triangle’s vision for service delivery read “Enabling Help: How the social provision can work better for the people it services”. You can download the report or watch this video of Joy speaking about the key ideas in the report.

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The Family Star Plus within the Supporting Families Programme (2022-25)

Posted on by Donna

All local authorities delivering Supporting Families must have an approved Outcome Plan setting out their indicators of eligibility with associated 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 version of the Star was developed specifically to be aligned with the programme’s objectives.

We are currently putting together guidance to show how the Family Star Plus fits the increased list of headline outcomes in the ‘Supporting Families Outcomes Framework 2022-25’, which will be in effect from 3 October 2022:

The new framework identifies ‘practitioner assessments and contacts’ or ‘Practitioner and/or self-assessment’ as valid data sources as part of the evidence within all of the ten headline outcomes, and the Outcomes Star, while collaboratively completed, fits within this category. 

‘Validated outcome measures’ are also suggested as evidence for meeting some outcomes. 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). 

We will publish the 2nd Edition of the Family Star Plus shortly as well as guidance on how to use the Family Star Plus (2nd Ed.) within the new Supporting Families framework.

Please contact our Research Analyst, Dr Anna Good (anna@triangleconsulting.co.uk) if you would like to find out more.

Refugee Week: What is it, and how do the Outcomes Stars support this year’s theme of ‘healing’?

Posted on by Outcomes Star

Refugee Week celebrates the contributions of refugees to challenge negative stereotypes and create a space where refugees can be seen and heard beyond their experience of displacement. It aims to celebrate community, mutual care, and the human ability to start again.

Triangle has been working with the Refugee sector since 2018, when the UK saw an increasing number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children needing our help. Many Local Authorities lacked the experience and tools they needed to support these vulnerable children holistically.  The worsening situation inspired Pathways to Independence and the South-East Strategic Partnership for Migration to approach Triangle to develop a new version of the Outcomes Star to help them better support young asylum seekers.

We were delighted to publish the Planning Star just over a year after starting the intensive development process. This Star is available in the following languages: English, Amharic, Arabic, Farsi, Tigrinya, Dari, Pashto, and Kurdish, with Ukrainian coming soon.

“The Planning Star is very trauma-informed and very visual, which is vital when working unaccompanied asylum-seeking with children who may not speak English”.
Photograph of Marie Buss
Marie BussTriangle

Around the same time, The Refugee Council, the UK’s leading charity working with refugees, also approached us to develop an Outcomes Star to support the increasing number of refugees arriving in the UK.

After 18 months of intensive development in collaboration with the Refugee Council, several smaller organisations and people with lived experience, we published The Integration Star. The Integration Star is now available in English, Swahili, Farsi, Arabic, and Somalia and has been mapped onto the Home Office’s Indicators of Integration framework.

A worker sums it up “The Integration Star is a really powerful, clear tool that can visualise a client’s support needs. I think it provokes conversations that highlight support needs that may have otherwise been missed”.

We are delighted to be able to publicise Refugee Week and highlight the contribution that refugees can make to their new country when enabled to heal, find their feet and make a fresh start.  The Integration Star and the Planning Star are playing their part in that process and we look forward to continuing to support the healing and flourishing of refugees in the UK and around the world.

Find out how the Stars work

See our Stars

The Outcomes Stars are evidence-based tools designed to support and measure personal change. There are now almost 50 Outcomes Stars available for a range of sectors and a wide variety of complex life challenges. They are used by over 1000 organisations globally.

The Integration Star and the Planning Star are available to all organisations with a Star licence, and training is available for workers and managers

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Triangle Consulting Social Enterprise is an innovative, mission-led organisation that exists to help people reach their highest potential and live meaningful and fulfilling lives, often in the context of social disadvantage, trauma, disability or illness.

The Refugee Council works with individuals and families to make sure they can live safe, fulfilling lives in the UK after being forced to seek refuge from persecution and human rights abuses overseas.

The development of this Star was part funded by the EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

Other organisations taking part in the development of the Integration Star included: RETAS (Refugee Education Training Advice Service) Leeds, Leeds Refugee Forum, Path Yorkshire, Goodwin Development Trust, Humber Community Advice Services (H-CAS), Refugee Action Kingston, Iranian Association, Diversity Living Services, Bahar Women’s Association, Action for Community Development, West Yorkshire Somali Association, DAMASQ, Stepping Stone 4, Leeds Swahili Community.

Family Star Plus – draft edition 2 now ready for feedback

Posted on by Outcomes Star

Tell us what you think

A year ago, we launched our review of the Family Stars with a comprehensive call to all users to find out what they thought. We now have a draft new edition of the Family Star Plus out for consultation. We will finalise it in the autumn, apply the learning to the other Family Stars and publish new, improved editions in spring 2023.

Our commitment to the suite of Stars

As a social enterprise, Triangle invests part of the Star licence in keeping the suite of Stars under review and up to date. We stay abreast of changes in sectors and keep learning alongside our collaborators. After 20 years, almost 50 Stars and over 60 research studies, we’ve learnt a lot. And much has changed and continues to change. In reviewing the Family Stars, we set out to address some aspects of the language and better reflect the increasingly challenging external environment, with more families experiencing poverty.

Language changes in Edition 2

We wanted the new editions to be even more strengths-based, trauma-informed, conversational and accessible. We addressed specific wording issues that users of the Stars raised, such as replacing ‘effective parenting’ at the top of the scale with ‘self-reliance’, the point at which families no longer need the service to ensure their children can thrive. We have better worded the scales to avoid any suggestion of blame or triggers for people while keeping the essential clarity needed between stages.

Fit with the Supporting Families outcomes framework 2022-2025

The original Family Star dates back to 2010. We later published the Family Star Plus in response to the UK government’s Supporting Families initiative (originally ‘Troubled Families’) and mapped the Family Star to the Scottish government outcomes framework. We have already mapped Edition 2 to the new Supporting Families outcomes framework and added references to some Star scales to clarify the fit while staying relevant to the diverse and international users of this Star.

The new editions keep the same outcome areas and Journey of Change. They will replace the current editions in 2023 without any impact on your reporting or training – though it may be an excellent opportunity to consider refreshing how you use the Star to ensure you get the most from it.

We are inviting Family Star users to review the draft new edition and tell us what you think.

Please contact: dawn@triangleconsulting.co.uk

Coming home with the Home Star

Posted on by Donna

Outcomes Star for homelessness gets a radical overhaul

Over the 20 years since we first started working on an outcomes tool for homelessness, a huge amount has changed in the sector. In response, we’ve undertaken a major review of the Outcomes Star. The resulting Home Star is now published – and it’s a truly person-centred Star for homeless people.

The Outcomes Star, commonly known as the Homelessness Star, was Triangle’s first ever outcomes tool. At its heart from the beginning were the principles of empowerment and collaboration that have informed Triangle’s work ever since. And its structure, with the simple yet engaging Star shape underpinned by a five-stage Journey of Change, has become the basis of the whole constellation of Stars that followed it.

Appropriately enough for a tool with collaboration at its heart, it came about through an initial collaboration with St Mungo’s back in 2002. We worked with St Mungo’s to design an outcomes tool, then developed it in collaboration with the London Housing Foundation and other homelessness charities to publish the Homelessness Star in 2006. It has been a resounding success and is widely used within the sector.

But with close to 50 Stars now published and more than 60 research studies supporting the Star’s validity, we’ve learned a lot since that first Star. We’ve come to know what resonates with service users, how to ensure that the stages in the Journey of Change are absolutely clear, and how to make sure each Star is measuring the things that really matter. It was time to put that learning back into the Homelessness Star.

"This version is much better. It’s much more user friendly, much more accurate, the terms are much more identifiable for end users. I think it’s a massive improvement. You’ve really addressed it, it’s bang up to date, the language is particularly good. Especially changes in safety and crime, and ‘Trust and hope’, is far better than ‘motivation’. Our keyworkers feel it does address all the issues."
Crisis logo
Crisis
“A person experiencing homelessness feels like they have an insurmountable knot to untangle. The Home Star helps untangle the knot of issues. The issues can be itemised and separated out, allowing the person to concentrate on each area and go on to see and feel the changes in their lives as a result”.
Ex-service user
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Time for a rethink

We had updated the Homelessness Star in 2017, but increasingly felt that it needed a more radical overhaul. As a social enterprise, Triangle invests part of the licence fee for Stars in keeping them under review and up to date – and we wanted to make a big investment in our first Star. So in April 2020 we formally kicked the process off with a Round Table of users of the Homelessness Star (see the Reviewing the Star box below).

Three main things drove the rethink. First and foremost, the language needed changing. Our more recent Stars are even more trauma-informed as we have learnt how to word them to avoid triggers or any suggestion of blame – so we wanted to bring that learning into what would be the new Home Star. And while the original Homelessness Star was also person-centred, the thinking on that has moved on and there was more that could be done to eliminate jargon, focus on the service user’s real concerns and put them right at the centre.

Secondly, the sector itself has changed rapidly over recent years. When we first wrote the Homelessness Star, the main clients were single homeless men. Today far more women and families are accessing services, and people often have significantly more complex needs. And with increasing pressures on funding, many homelessness services are offering shorter-term interventions.

Thirdly, the external environment for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness has got tougher. There’s less social housing, the cost of living is sky high, and access to work has become even tougher. It was important to reflect all that more explicitly in the new edition of the Star.

“We’re really proud of the new Home Star,” says Triangle director Sara Burns. “It was our first flagship Star, and we wanted to make it as good and relevant and accessible as it could possibly be. So we’re delighted at the way it’s being received. We’ve had feedback that it’s ‘bang up to date’, with the language being particularly good. And perhaps most importantly, it’s person-centred to its very core.”

The new Home Star

At a glance: what’s changed in the Home Star 

  • There’s trauma-informed language throughout – for example: “You don’t have the help you need or are not ready to engage with it. Perhaps it doesn’t work for you or it’s hard to trust it”.
  • The Star works for women and families and for people with complex needs.
  • There are explicit references to external factors that are beyond the control of the service and of the service user.
  • The former “Motivation and responsibility” area has become “Trust and hope” and is completely different.
  • The old “Offending” area has been reworked as “Safety and crime”, focusing much more on homeless people being victims of crime.
  • The “Alcohol and drugs” area now recognises that drinking or taking drugs can be a coping strategy.
  • The “Meaningful use of time” scale has become “How I spend my time” and focuses more on what is meaningful for the service user.
  • There are more accessible materials, including Flashcards for people with limited English or who struggle with forms.

Reviewing the Star: the process

Gathering feedback
– Continuous input over many years through our trainers and implementing leads
– Meeting with MEAM and others
– Workshop organised by Brighton Women’s Centre
– Round Table in April 2020
– Wide call for feedback

Testing successive drafts
– Drafts sent for feedback in April and Nov 2021
– Workshop with Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) in Dec 2021
– Final version Jan 2022
– Launch webinar Mar 2022
– New Star available April 2022

A major collaboration: organisations contributing to the review

How to start with the new Star

For new Star users, the process is simple – get in touch with Triangle (details below), get a licence and some training and you can start using the Home Star straightaway.

For organisations already using the Homelessness Star, switching is free for all licence holders, and there’s guidance on the Triangle website on how to do it with minimum disruption. There’s also support for licensed trainers. However it’s important to realise that the new Home Star is significantly different from the Star it replaces. The data won’t match (for example, the “Trust and hope” area is entirely different from the old “Motivation and responsibility”, so there needs to be a period of adjustment.

“There will be an interruption in the continuity of detailed data when switching over, and you will need to update your internal policy and other documentation mentioning the Star,” says Sara Burns. “But we’re confident that the effort of switching is well worth it.”

Next steps

New ‘How to’ guide explains how the Outcomes Star can turn Human Learning Systems principles into practice

Posted on by Outcomes Star

Since the publication of our Enabling Help report last year, we have been working with Toby Lowe and colleagues at the Centre for Public Impact to articulate how the Outcomes Star can operationalise learning as a management strategy and other core components of the Human Learning Systems (HLS) paradigm.

Both HLS and Enabling help focus on moving on from the failings of New Public Management towards an alternative vision of supporting ‘human freedom and flourishing’ through creating flexible, relational, compassionate service delivery systems in which the role of measuring is to support learning for individuals, organisations and places.

The Star as a tool for turning HLS and Enabling Help principles into practice

We are delighted that the Star is one of the tools identified in the Centre for Public Impact’s recently launched guide: Human Learning Systems: A practical guide for the curious, commissioned by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Iriss.  

 The guide highlights three different ways that the Outcomes Star can be used to put the principles of Human Learning Systems into practice:

  • Person level: the Star empowers people to take an overview of where they are, understand their life as a system, choose their goals and work out the next steps to achieve them
  • Organisation/place level: the Star enables meaningful purpose-aligned reflection and learning about what is and isn’t working within services, in order to better support those they serve
  • Connected learning cycles: the Star offers a way of collective sense-making between different actors within or across organisations, for example within a multidisciplinary team supporting an individual, or between commissioners and service providers

Read the Outcomes Star case studies included within the guide. 

The synergy between the Star and human learning systems

HLS started as an analysis of the problems within traditional approaches to public service management.  It has gone on to articulate an alternative framework and then look for practical ways of bringing that vision to life. 

The Outcomes Star, in contrast, started as a practical tool for service providers to evidence that they are making a difference in a way that really reflects and supports what they do. From there we articulated the vision of service delivery and public management that was implicit in the tool in our Enabling Help report. 

The convergence of these approaches, despite their different starting points, speaks volumes.  The time has come for this shift in thinking and practice.  We look forward to furthering collaboration with the HLS movement and others who share this vision.

Could your use of the Star inspire others?
Are you working with the Star as part of a wider HLS approach?
Please get in touch with our Research analyst, Dr Anna Good (anna@triangleconsulting.co.uk), as we are keen to create and publicise more case studies.  

Human Learning Systems – A practical guide to doing public management differently

Posted on by Donna

This article was originally published by the Centre for Public Impact.

Last year, we worked with several organisations to release an e-book – Human Learning Systems: Public Service for the Real World. This had one key message: if we want to achieve real outcomes in the world, then we need to do public management differently. That is, we need to plan and organise public service in a radically different way.

Back in 2016-17, when a few of us first began to explore this idea, this was a distinctly heretical position to take. The people that spoke to us for our first report did so on condition of anonymity. Fast forward five years. Now, not only do we have a good picture of what an alternative approach to public management looks like, we have over 50 case studies of that in practice from around the world. And those who have been at the vanguard of this practice, like Plymouth Council, are winning national awards for doing so.

At the same time, across Scotland’s health and social care system, there is a growing appetite to commission differently, to better focus on creating the conditions for people to achieve the outcomes that matter most to them. That’s why Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Iriss commissioned the Centre for Public Impact to create a practical guide for organisations who want to use a Human Learning Systems approach to public management. 

We’re excited that the guide, Human Learning Systems: A practical guide for the curious, is now ready for organisations to use. But, before we ask you to dive in, we wanted to share a little about the journey we’ve been on so far, the need for this resource, and what you can expect.

Recognising the complexity of our lives

Human Learning Systems begins with the recognition that real outcomes are created by the unique combination of actors and factors, and the relationships and interactions between them, that make up a person’s life.

Sturmberg, JP (2018) Health System Redesign How to Make Health Care Person-Centered, Equitable,and Sustainable. Springer, Australia. p238

The exact combination of relationships between actors and factors that create a desirable outcome in one person’s life will be different to another person’s. And, it will change over time, as our lives evolve, and the world changes.

Learning as a Management Strategy

Therefore, if we care about outcomes, we need a different approach to public management which recognises this complexity. We need Learning as Management Strategy. This is what our new guide to Human Learning Systems helps organisations get to grips with. Our guide enables those engaged in any aspect of social action or public service to organise themselves to have the best chance of creating genuine outcomes in the complex environments of people’s lives.

Learning as Management Strategy changes the focus of what can be planned and managed. Rather than trying to meticulously pre-plan and organise a programme of activity in someone’s life, it enables public facing workers to learn together with the people they serve. They can learn about the unique nature of each person’s life as a complex system – the key relationships and the driving factors in their life – and how all of those things interact. And then, when they have learnt together, it enables the workers and those being served, to explore and experiment together around what helps to produce better and different outcomes in people’s lives.

HLS Learning Cycle

All of this exploration and experimentation generates challenges for how systems at other scales are planned and managed – how teams, organisations, places and nations work. And so the managers at these scales need to undertake the same processes of learning and experimentation – to ensure that the action-learning which supports the creation of real outcomes happens rigorously, efficiently and effectively.

Human Learning Systems: A practical guide for the curious

All of these action-learning processes can be planned and managed.

Our new guide is designed to help people understand the practical actions they will likely need to take to plan, organise and undertake these action-learning activities.

The guide incorporates case study examples, written by Andy Brogan from Easier Inc, and Mark Smith from Gateshead Council, to illustrate the applications of the framework in real life. It draws on the richness of their experiences to explore the detailed methods they use, the obstacles they encountered, and how they responded to those obstacles, all while placing learning at the heart of their approach.

The guide was also tested with public sector and voluntary organisations across Scotland who supported us in further iterating and developing it so it can support experimentation in different contexts. 

How can you help?

This is just the beginning. We’re keen to keep testing and iterating the guide and keep asking the question: “what help do people need to adopt a Human Learning Systems approach?” We’ll be seeking feedback from everyone who downloads it – was it useful? How could it be better? Do write to us and tell us how you’re using the guide. With your help, we can truly create something extraordinary.

Explore the guide

We’ve worked with partners to develop a practical new guide to help you apply the Human Learning Systems approach to your work. Download the guide to begin your journey towards more human public services.

Download the guide
This article was originally published by the Centre for Public Impact.
Written by:
Toby Lowe Visiting Professor in Public Management

Chandrima Padmanabhan Senior Associate, Europe
View biography