Category: Opinion

From our experience supporting hundreds of frontline services to use the Star, we know that how services help people matters.

We were excited to see the “Good Help” report, which proposes a simple and powerful distinction between ‘Good Help’ and ‘Bad Help.‘

The report harvests the best of current practice in behaviour change programmes alongside a description of the historical development of  behaviour change, from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Bandura’s work on self-efficacy to motivational interviewing and Susan Michie’s contemporary COB-B model.

Looking at the seven characteristics of ‘Good Help’, we were struck by how nearly all of these are hardwired into the Stars and the Journey of Change that underpins them.  To unpick this and to respond to the challenge in the report of putting ‘Good Help’ into practice, we’ve written a short piece demonstrating how the Outcomes Star can help frontline services to put these values into action.   Read our response here:  Good help and the Outcomes Star

We very much welcome the Good Help report and project, and believe that the powerful concept of ‘good help’ could help to focus a cross-sectoral movement for change which recognises that the most important ingredient in the change recipe is the goals, capabilities and motivation of service user themselves. We would like to add our voice to the Good Help movement and hope that the Outcomes Stars can be part of the toolkit that enables organisations to make that vision a reality.

To join the mailing list for the latest news about the Good Help project from OSCA and NESTA, sign up here.

The Star made a massive difference to me because it showed me that there were things I could do to become the person I wanted to be: a more rounded person with a more rounded Star. The Outcomes Star showed me that there were goals I could achieve. When you’re ill, the thought that you can be well seems very daunting but the Star breaks it down into baby steps and you start to feel yes, I can do this. That really built my confidence and gave me hope.” Young person

A guest blog from Anne Lythgoe, Social Audit Network

Understanding the outcomes for the stakeholders in your organisation or service, and how this might create longer term beneficial impacts is the main purpose of using an Outcomes Star. But Outcomes Stars can also be used as part of a framework which helps your organisation better manage the outcomes and impact that it makes.

Social Accounting and Audit allows a third sector organisation or community business to build on existing monitoring, documentation and reporting systems to develop a process to account fully for social, environmental and economic impacts, report on performance and draw up action plans to improve on that performance. Through this process an organisation can understand its impact on the surrounding community and build a role as a catalyst for local benefit.

Widely used across the social economy, social accounting builds from use of tools like the Outcomes Star to really embed social benefit into your organisation.

The framework is built around 4 steps, as shown in the diagram opposite.

Organisations produce social accounts and social impact reports using this process.

For more information about social accounting, please contact the Social Audit Network (SAN), which is a not-for-profit organisation that facilitates the exchange of information and experience between practitioners of social accounting and audit in the social economy, community and voluntary sectors.

SAN holds regular meetings, events and an annual conference at venues around the UK, distributes a monthly SAN circular to its email network.  www.socialuditnetwork.org.uk

SAN was incorporated in 2003 by members of a national network of co-operative, social business and community development practitioners which had existed since the mid 1990s in the UK.