In our latest impact report, Pathways to Change, we highlighted how data-driven improvement can help us to see how we can make a difference, map our influence and, crucially, further improve the support we provide.
Here, Louise Hall, our Impact and Evaluation Lead, looks at what we mean by data driven improvement and how we see it in action.
At Future Pathways, one of our service outcomes is to help make sure that people registered with us can access the right support for them. One of the ways we work towards this is by continuing to learn about our support. This includes what works well, how support can be improved, and the impact we have.
Over time, we have designed a bespoke way of assessing the quality and consistency of our support. We call this our Quality Framework. We use this to look at evidence from across the service so we can see:
- What is working well about our support
- The progress we are making
- Any gaps in our practice and processes
- How this impacts people’s experience at Future Pathways
- The steps we can take to improve
- The resources and/or guidance we might need to make changes
Our Quality Framework helps us feel more confident in what we learn through our impact evaluation and, together with our impact evaluation, it helps us make data driven improvements to our service.
Data driven improvement means pulling together different types of data from across the service – such as support plans and Delivery Partner contracts – to find out how we could improve. And it means using our evidence to inform and direct the changes we make at Future Pathways.
When we identify that something needs to be improved, we work together to make changes that will work practically and make a difference to people registered with us. Often, groups comprising team members from across the service pool their expertise to explore options and find the right way forward.
For example, since 2021, we have been working on improving our data system, Carista, to improve the efficiency of our processes. A group of Future Pathways team members have been working together, alongside our partner Rockpool Solutions, on this improvement project. The changes we have made so far have had many positive impacts, such as helping to make it easier for people to register for support, and giving us more confidence in our data.
We also seek input from Voices for a Better Future, our lived experience voice group. For example, last year members of the Voices for a Better Future group worked with us to co-design what peer support could look like at Future Pathways. Now, we are starting put the ideas of the group into action. We will share more about the peer support opportunities we will develop for people registered with us next year.
We have also worked with Voices for a Better Future to improve how we ask people registered with us for feedback and equal opportunities information. With input from people with lived experience and team members across the service, we launched our new approach to feedback and equal opportunities in 2023. Now, people registered with us have more ways to give us anonymous feedback about their experience. And we ask for sensitive equal opportunities information later in support, when people have had the time to build up some trust with their Support Coordinator.
We will continue to leverage our Quality Framework to drive improvement at Future Pathways. For example, our Quality Framework and impact evaluation findings showed that we could improve how we facilitate conversations at the start of support about what matters most to people registered with us. Given that all our support is tailored to each person’s own outcomes, we know that these conversations are important; they help us make sure that people can access the right support for them. So, a group of team members from across the service is working on this now.
It is our hope that by continuing to make positive changes and sharing the improvements we make, people can access the right support for them at Future Pathways and other services.