What managers say

It's more transparent to see a person has gone from A to B. From a manager’s point of view, you can see that the service is working. You can see the individual benefit: you have the starting point and the end point.
Humbercare

The Star is one of the few tools that are useful for both clients and staff and helps us demonstrate what we're doing - it ticks a lot of boxes. 
Norwich City Assertive Outreach Team

The clear ladder of change has given us a shared language for talking about client need – it's opened up lots of conversations at management level and helped us to consider and understand client need and how we respond to it.

It's also helped us to be really clear about what the role of different projects is – where on the ladder they take people in and where on the ladder they are aiming to get people to. It helps us tailor our work to the individual by helping us to understand where each person is on their journey and what they need to take the next step.
St. Mungo's

By focusing on the agreed support plans the Star stops us getting too entrenched in the day-to-day issues brought in by our clients and losing sight of the bigger picture. It shows both improvement and where people need more support; it reinforces the progress made and helps engage clients in their own process.

It helped us develop and improve our needs assessment and reinforced the importance of really engaging with service users.
Croftlands Trust

We have started to share outcomes data with commissioners including Supporting People, Social Services and the Primary Care Trust and have had very positive responses. For example, one said they wished they had that kind of information for other services they commission as well.

This reflects well on us as a voluntary organisation. We anticipate project level outcomes data being increasingly useful in discussion and negotiation locally.
Croftlands Trust

My advice to anyone thinking about doing this would be that it will probably take more time than you think but the investment repays itself.... What we now have is better keywork, more client-focused services and real evidence which we can use with commissioners.
Single Homeless Project

Using the Star means that we look at the client holistically – rather than just talking about the things that are easy to talk about, we look at everything. This was difficult for workers at first because they didn’t feel comfortable asking about the more difficult areas but the result has been very positive.

The services are more client-focused because the Star makes us think about the client and what is changing for each individual. Because it helps to pinpoint where service users are making progress and where they're not, it has helped staff to start thinking creatively about how to get greater improvements as well.
Single Homeless Project

Normally when we introduce something new to people there is a silent groan – it means more paperwork. The real test came when support officers sat down with some service users and completed the Star – where they started in red pen and where they are now in black pen.

Immediately, I could feed back to my head office some really impressive results. Support officers said it was good. Service users really enjoyed the interaction – and there were statistical results! The feedback was excellent and there was no resistance – quite the opposite.
St. Christopher’s charity, Greenwich