ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

If there is a Holy Grail in the voluntary sector, it's probably the search for ways to measure what are known as "soft outcomes".

It's easy to measure a person's progress in terms of getting a job or successfully moving into independent living. But, although we know that helping clients get up in the morning, or even to stay at one address for more than a few weeks, can be a great achievement, the problem is how to measure the signs of this progress.

With the introduction of Supporting People reviews, this is becoming an increasingly live issue.

High spirits
In looking for a solution to this problem, the Foyer Federation set out to develop an instrument that would be useful to residents, frontline staff, management and funders alike.

The system, SpiritLevel, was developed after four years of piloting across a range of organisations, to measure changes in a person's quality of life.

It does this by asking how important to them are a number of different concepts – such as body image, friendship, values, control over one's life – and then discovering how satisfied they are in terms of each.

People who are very satisfied in relation to the concepts they rate as the most important have a better quality of life.

SpiritLevel has the potential to produce the kind of data vital to ensuring Supporting People reviews are a success

Stopping dramas becoming crises
The first benefit that organisations in the pilot gained from using SpiritLevel was in the initial diagnostic interview.

Instead of issues in the resident's life surfacing over a period of months, SpiritLevel's structured approach meant it was easier to identify problems from the outset, leading to the formulation of an action plan to nip difficulties in the bud.

Second, by repeating the exercise at regular intervals, it is possible to measure whether progress is being made on whether the action plan needs to be modified. For management and funders, the data can demonstrate whether or not residents' lives are on an upward curve.

By and large across the pilot, improvements in quality of life as measured by SpiritLevel correlated with "hard" outcomes, such as a successful move into independent living.

The indicators
Happily, the development of SpiritLevel anticipated the types of indicators with which Supporting People is also concerned, such as family contacts, health and wellbeing, plus cultural and religious needs. Thus, SpiritLevel has the potential to produce the kind of data vital to ensuring Supporting People reviews are a success.

SpiritLevel in action
Portsmouth Foyer has been using SpiritLevel for more than a year. It is used as part of the initial action planning process with each resident, and then followed up every six weeks.