There is a general acceptance that preventative work is vital in order to address increasing social problems, but it is difficult to measure this.
We work with organisations that sometimes find it a challenge to evidence the impact they have on the people they work with. Many of these organisations work on a preventative agenda, where the long term effects of an intervention might not be visible for a year.
We have developed a comprehensive system of risk management to help organisations demonstrate this impact. We believe that organisations can identify specific risks in clients and, by working to remove these risks, demonstrate success against national outcomes frameworks.
Our system of risk management is underpinned by comprehensive data dictionaries that demonstrate links between individual risks and outcomes. Each data dictionary is constantly monitored to ensure it reflects current outcome frameworks and is relevant to the data that commissioners have to report on.
We encourage organisations to carry out a whole person assessment with their clients. This means looking wider than the issues that a service might be able to resolve and drawing a picture of all the complex issues that an individual might be seeking help with.
We do this using our model of Risk Maps. Each Risk Map has been designed to be relevant to the type of service using it, listing those sort of issues that clients commonly present.
We have developed a system of weighting the relative risks in order to give clients a simple score. Change in this score, over time, allows you to assess whether or not you are having an impact on individuals.
One of the key issues in working within a face-to-face or advice environment is recognising that reporting should not have a detrimental impact on the service that you are trying to deliver. For this reason we work on a system of disclosure, where risks are only recorded if they are identified as part of an intervention. This helps organisations to begin recording impact without excessive forms to complete.
Contact us for a demonstration of how this practical approach to measuring impact works.