Set your own goals
Your annual return to the Housing Corporation will show your performance over the year in terms of collecting rent or how long a property remained empty before being let. But the data does not contain information such as how you support your tenants – the face-to-face contact or the time spent organising activities. With Supporting People on the way, you will need to set your own goals, or "performance indicators" as they are now. This involves looking more closely at the activities that are run as part of the service so resources can be monitored and allocated. So how do you do this?
Look beyond the 'hard' evidence
Don't write off something like a weekly activity because it didn't attract a huge crowd, or a particular service because tenants don't use it often enough. Numbers participating in social events should not be the only measure of success: focusing on your tenants might mean that a small number of activities, each of which is attended by few people, are as beneficial as a larger activity. Another measurement of your service is how much time scheme managers spend with tenants: time spent planning individual support is just as valuable as the overall support plan itself.
Think SMART outcomes
One of the hardest parts of setting goals is turning an objective into something you can measure. Think SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time. There are six steps to setting SMART objectives. First identify your goal, then ask what needs to change to reach that goal. This shows what action is needed and allows you to set measurable targets.
Involve tenants
You may find that involving tenants is time-consuming, but this will be part of Supporting People. You need to ensure there is a range of methods in place to gauge feedback. The tenant satisfaction survey is the most basic way of involving tenants, whereas focus groups are excellent for getting tenants involved and examining more specific areas of your service.
It is important to bear in mind, though, that any kind of information gathering is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Help is at hand
It may seem like an uphill struggle, but there are sources of information available that will help you to review your service.
The Centre for Sheltered Housing Studies' Code of Practice for Sheltered Housing and Related Support for Older People in the Community shows you how to examine and deliver your service.
The Starfish Appraisal Toolkit for Sheltered Housing explains how to evaluate sheltered housing services through a number of elements such as external benchmarking, service quality, stock condition and staff skills and training. This information will help you decide the future of each sheltered scheme within best value and what is needed for your local Supporting People teams.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Meic Phillips is service manager, elders at Epic Trust, chair of the Emerging Role of Sheltered Housing's Good Practice Group and author of its good practice guide, Performance Indicators for Sheltered Housing
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