What are outcomes?

Outcomes are the measured changes, improvements, benefits or other effects to service users as a result of using your services. They can be wide-ranging, and some more tangible than others.

Hard Outcomes are are obvious changes that are relatively easy to measure, such as a change in housing or employment status.

Soft Outcomes are changes that are less easily observed or measured, such an increase in self-esteem or a change in attitude. Read about measuring soft outcomes

Interim Outcomes are smaller changes, or markers of progress towards a clear, defined outcome.

Outputs are the activities and services that your organisation provides for service users.

To put some of this into the context of a homelessness organisation, examples of outcomes that you may look to measure are:

• An increased or maintained ability to live independently
• A decreased need for support
• A decreased or managed risk to the service user and others

The outputs that might be considered in order to achieve these outcomes include: keyworking sessions; basic skills training; access and referral to training and employment services and educational courses; housing and benefits advice.

Why are outcomes important?

There is increasing pressure on organisations to prove their worth to external bodies and funders. Therefore, providing evidence of a valuable service via outcomes measurement is becoming necessary for even the smallest service providers. The onus is on organisations to keep detailed records of their work with clients and implementing an outcomes model can improve this process. Moreover, it can help you evaluate your service and assess the ways in which you are achieving your overall aims and the outcome targets defined by your funders. Measuring your service against set outcomes can identify gaps in provision or areas of service which require improvement. Indeed, it may be that this process encourages you to consider the aims of your service, to redefine your outcomes, change your outputs, extend service provision to different client groups, or even negotiate funding or outcomes targets with your funders.

At our regional Spotlight on Outcomes event, delegates took part in group exercises to consider the aims, outcomes and outputs that might be applicable to a range of different organisations or services. Some examples of what they came up with are here. When considering the range of outputs for your service it is important to ask yourself how it fits in with the overall aim of the service. What is the benefit to your clients? If the service did not exist, how would it affect your clients?

An interesting idea also came out of the Spotlight events: applying the question So what? to each outcome measurement. For example, you are a day centre and record that 100 people attended the centre in a given week, 80 of whom were given lunch. So what? What does this actually tell you and how does it relate to your organisational aim? Has the clients' presence at the day centre helped them to progress towards long-term independent living? Have clients accessed services relevant to their needs or been signposted to others? It is difficult to know the answers to these questions unless you are able to map clients' progress against outcomes related to the aim of the service you provide.

It's not just about keeping funders happy

It can often seem that measuring outcomes is just another layer of administration imposed by funders, but it can also provide valuable opportunities to engage with service users and staff and to bring a new focus to support provision.