Outcomes framework
Outcomes were developed under the previous commissioning round in 2018 in partnership with Lambeth Council, youth organisations, young people, Lambeth Made and other stakeholders in the lives of Lambeth’s children and young people.
We expect consortiums/partnerships to plan to meet all outcomes through the work they deliver.
When identifying an outcome you intend to address, you must choose a relevant tool from the outcomes framework. You might work with multiple outcomes, but we will require evidence of the one(s) you identify.
Life Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ)
LEQ is a multi-dimensional tool which measures typical aims of personal growth programs. Designed to be user-friendly, with downloadable questionnaires, data entry spreadsheets, etc., and can be customised to match aims of specific interventions.
Comments: Ok for mainstream young people but definitely not for the vast majority of young people with learning disabilities – Rathbone.
Age range: 12 plus
Specific area: Personal growth
Cost: Free
Developed/Owned by: James Neill (University of Canberra, Australia)
Link: LEQ on the Psychological Scales website
The Outcomes Star
The Outcomes Star™ both measures and supports progress for service users towards self-reliance or other goals. The Stars are designed to be completed collaboratively as an integral part of keywork.
They are sector wide tools different and versions of the Star include homelessness, mental health and young people. All versions consists of a number of scales based on an explicit model of change. This creates coherence across the whole tool and a Star Chart onto which the service user and worker plot where the service user is on their journey.
The attitudes and behaviour expected at each of the points on each scale are clearly defined, usually in detailed scale descriptions, summary ladders or a quiz format.
Comments: Anonymised case studies completed by youth workers, subjective and can't necessarily produce any meaningful stats. Good for youth work reflection, good for discussing impact with funders - Fulham FC.
Age range: Children, adults, and specific groups
Specific area: Making a difference, hopes and dreams, well being, education and work, communication, choices and behaviour.
Cost:
- £650 basic license and training for two
- £2860 licence and training for 16
- £12,362 licence and training for 120
Developed / Owned by: Triangle Consulting
Link: More information on the Outcome Star website
Youth Star
Developments since 2012 are reshaping youth work. As the publication of, 'Positive for Youth', and new statutory guidance encourage local authorities to focus their efforts on vulnerable young people, new skills and tools are needed. They proactively offer local authorities a range of training for youth workers, using the Youth Star, as a way to respond to challenges and provide the skills and tools necessary to engage young people, support and measure change.
Age range: Children
Specific area: Making a difference, hopes and dreams, well being, education and work, communication, choices and behaviour
Cost:
- £650 basic license and training for two
- £2860 licence and training for 16
- £12,362 licence and training for 120
Developed / Owned by: Triangle Consulting
Link: More information on the Outcome Star website
Well-being Star
The Well-being Star has been designed for people living with a long term health condition, to support and measure their progress in living as well as they can. It can work as a stand-alone tool, or as part of Personal Health Plan materials. The Well-being Star is designed to either be self-completed by a patient, or ideally completed by a patient and health professional together.
Comments: The Well-Being Star supports and measures progress in eight areas that together enable people to live as well as they can with a long term health condition.
Age range: Children, adults and specific groups.
Specific areas: Lifestyle, looking after yourself, managing symptoms, work, volunteering and other activities, money , where you live, family and friends, and feeling positive.
Cost:
- £650 basic license and training for two
- £2860 licence and training for 16
- £12,362 licence and training for 120
Developed / Owned by: Triangle Consulting
Link: More information on the Outcome Star website
Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (RSES)
The RSES is designed similar to social-survey questionnaires. It is a 10 item Likert-type scale with items answered on a four-point scale—from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Five of the items have positively worded statements and five have negatively worded ones.
The scale measures state self-esteem by asking the respondents to reflect on their current feelings. The original sample for which the scale was developed consisted of 5,024 high-school juniors and seniors from 10 randomly selected schools in New York State. The Rosenberg self-esteem scale is considered a reliable and valid quantitative tool for self-esteem assessment.
Age range: Not specified
Specific area: Self-esteem measure
Cost: Free online
Developed / Owned by: Rosenberg, 1965
Link: View information on the Rosenberg Self esteem scale on the York University website
Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) Rating Scales
Social skills, problem behaviors, and academic competence scales: Standard scores and percentile ranks.
Subscales: Behavior Levels (below average, average, above average).
Items: Frequency and importance ratings point to behaviors that may require intervention.
Comments: We had to adapt impact questions from this tool, pre and post questionnaire to suit our cohorts - Lambeth Dramatherapy
Age range: 3 to 18 years old
Specific area: Child behaviour, e.g. diagnosing behavioural, learning or clinical issues
Cost: £300 plus depending on type of product and level of subscription
Developed / Owned by: Pearson
Link: View information on Social Skills Improvement System SSIS Rating Scales on the Pearson Assessments website.
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
The SDQ is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire about 3 to 16 year olds. It exists in several versions to meet the needs of researchers. Each version includes between one and three of the following components:
1. Emotional symptoms (5 items) 1. to 4. added together to generate a total difficulties score (based on 20 items)
2. Conduct problems (five items)
3. Hyperactivity/inattention (five items)
4. Peer relationship problems (five items)
5. Prosocial behaviour (five items) clinicians and educationalists.
Comments: The SDQ is part of the DAWBA family of mental heath measures.
Age range: 4 to 17
Specific area: Child behaviour
Cost: Free
Developed / Owned by: Dawba
Link: Visit the Youth in Mind website for more information
The Wellbeing Valuation Approach
Research by Affinity Sutton and Catalyst Housing, with the London School of Economics and HACT, has created the ‘Social Value Bank’. This is a set of 53 measures that will enable any organisation involved in community investment activity – from reducing antisocial behaviour to helping residents into work – to calculate the impact of their activity.
To create the Social Value Bank measures, the research team used sophisticated econometric modelling to assess the relationship between wellbeing and a change in someone’s life circumstance, for example getting a job after being unemployed.
Comments: Social impact measuring tool developed by LSEE and Catalyst - practical SROI calculations.
Age range: Youth and adults
Specific area: Wellbeing and change in life circumstances
Cost: Free
Developed / Owned by: Daniel Fujiwara, London School of Economics
Most Significant Change technique (MSC)
MSC is a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) technique/ method used for evaluating complex interventions using volumes of qualitative information from multiple stakeholders, in order to inform monitoring, to play a part in evaluation, and to inform service design by identifying areas of most impact which may otherwise have gone unrecognised.
Age range: All ages
Specific area: Most significant change or impact areas of a project
Cost: Free, but may take a while to implement the process
Developed / Owned by: ODI
Link: Find out more about MSC on the ODI website.
Behaviour Assessment System for Children (BASC-2)
This is primarily a diagnostic tool designed by child psychologists for use by clinicians to determine whether a child has behavioural, learning or clinical issues. It uses a triangular system, whereby the individual, the individual’s parent, and the individual’s teacher all do an assessment of some 130 plus statements. There are different versions of the tool for children from the age of 2 years upwards. The system also includes a Student Observation System, and Structured Developmental History.
Each statement is responded to with ‘Never’, ‘Sometimes’, ‘Often’, or ‘Almost Always’. There are sample profiles for ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Depression Disorders, Emotional/Behavioural Disturbance, Hearing Impairment, Learning Disability, Mental Retardation or Developmental Delay, Motor Impairment, Pervasive Developmental Disorders (including Asperger's and Autism), and Speech or Language Disorder.
Age range: 2 to 5 years old, 6 to 11 years old, 12 to 21years old
Specific area: Child behaviour, e.g. diagnosing behavioural, learning or clinical issues
Cost: £143 plus
Developed / Owned by: Pearson Clinical
Link: Visit the Pearson Clinical website for more information.
BASC-3: BEES Brief Behavioural & Emotional Screening System
The BASC-3 Behavioural and Emotional Screening System has been devised in the US for use by schools, mental health clinics, paediatric clinics, communities, and researchers to screen for a variety of behavioural and emotional disorders that can lead to adjustment problems.
There are two teacher forms (one for children aged 3 to 5 years, one for 6 plus), two parent forms (same age bands) and one child form.
Each form consists of 25 to 30 questions with the responses ‘Never’, ‘Sometimes’, ‘Often’, or ‘Almost Always’ and requires no training by the assessors. The results give a total score for the student which, “is a reliable and accurate predictor of a broad range of behavioural,
emotional and academic problems".
Age range: 2 to 18 years
Specific area: Child behaviour, e.g. diagnosing behavioural, learning or clinical issues
Cost: From £277 including scoring subscription
Developed / Owned by: Pearson Clinical
Link: Visit the Pearson Clinical website for more information.
Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28)
Developed by the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University in Canada, this tool was devised through consultation with young people across 11 countries about the obstacles they face and what possible resources they call upon to navigate through or around these obstacles. The resulting questionnaire consists of 28 statements which explore the individual, relational, communal and cultural resources that may bolster the resilience of children and young people. There is also a shorter 12 statement version.
As well as measuring overall resilience, it measures three subcategories which the developers of the tool found to influence resilience processes: individual traits, relationship to caregiver(s), and contextual factors that facilitate a sense of belonging.
Resilience is defined by the Resilience Research Centre as:
- The capacity of individuals to navigate their ways to resources that sustain wellbeing.
- The capacity of individuals’ physical and social ecologies to provide those resources.
- The capacity of individuals, their families and their communities to negotiate culturally meaningful ways to share resources.
There are four versions of the CYRM-28:
- child (5 to 9 years old)
- youth (10 to 23 years old)
- adults (24+ years old)
- person most knowledgeable (someone who knows the child/youth well)
Comments: The tool is freely available upon request from the Resilience Research Centre who then send the files to download along with a detailed manual on how to use the tool, and how to score and interpret the results. This is a relatively simple tool to use, and it covers a broad age-range as well as having the benefit of being free and not requiring training. It is a validated tool for tracking progression in projects tackling the issue of resilience.
Age range: 5 to 9 years old, 10 to 23 years old, 24 plus
Specific area: Resilience
Cost: Free (on request)
Developed / Owned by: Resilience Research Centre (Canada)
Other acceptable monitoring/evaluation tools
If you have a customised monitoring/evaluation tool, it must be approved by Project Oracle/Centre for Youth Impact then this will also be deemed acceptable.
If your monitoring tool is accredited then this will also be acceptable.