The Family Impact Star (Addictions) is now available
Introducing the Family Impact Star.
This Star is for people affected by the addictive behaviour of someone close to them such as a family member, partner, adult child or close friend.
The main focus of the Star is on supporting people impacted by someone’s relationship with alcohol, drugs or gambling, but it may also be suitable for other addictions.
This Star is not suitable for use with children or in relation to food addictions.
How does the Family Impact Star work?
The Family Impact Star is a holistic, person-centred keywork and measurement tool for practitioners to use in one-to-one support work. Completing the Star is an engaging, empowering and collaborative process that helps you to build an open, trusting relationship with the person that you’re supporting.
The Star creates a safe space where genuine conversations can happen and you can explore all relevant aspects of a person’s life, track progress and create a shared basis for an action or support plan.
It covers 7 outcome areas:
- Understanding addiction: Understanding how addiction can affect people and those close to them.
- Our relationship: Your relationship with the person with an addiction.
- Being safe and in control: Learning ways to protect yourself and others in your family from any abuse by the person with an addiction.
- Managing daily life: Keeping a daily routine and being able to meet your responsibilities.
- My health and well-being: The impact of the person’s addiction on your health and well-being.
- Friends and community: Getting the support you need, feeling connected to friends, family and others and not being isolated by the impact of addiction.
- Who I am: Doing things you enjoy and that help you feel good about yourself or regain a sense of who you are.
The Journey of Change
The Journey of Change is a framework for moving through the outcome areas. It breaks down change into small, achievable steps.
The Family Impact Star five Journey of Change steps:
- Managing well
- Finding your way
- Starting to deal with it
- Taking it in
- Stuck
How does this work?
The Journey of Change works with an outcome area like the seven outlined above to help workers understand what the person they are working with is going through and how best to help them at each stage.
For the outcome ‘Understanding addiction’ the Journey of Change would look like the visual below:
The full Star materials also include lots of extra details on what a person might be experiencing at each stage to help them decide where they are on their journey.
How the Family Impact Star was developed
We were approached by Relationships Australia Queensland (RAQ) to develop a new version of the Gambling Recovery Star – a holistic way of supporting and measuring recovery. We agreed to develop a version of the star aimed specifically for people affected by the addiction of someone close to them such as a family member or friend.
Once the scope of the project had been agreed we developed a pilot version of the new star with an expert working group. This group brought together managers and practitioners from organisations supporting people affected by others’ addictive behaviour. We also worked with people who have lived experience of supporting someone with a gambling addiction.
If you’d like to learn more about how this Star was developed, you can read the Family Impact Star full development report.
Developing the Star in Pilot
Unique Outcomes trained practitioners to use the pilot version of the Family Impact Star and they completed the Star with people being supported. At the end of the pilot, Star readings were sent to Triangle for analyses of the psychometric properties of the Star Pilot.
The feedback and Star pilot readings were then used to make changes to the Star, before final workshops and reference groups were held to create the final version.
For more information on the psychometric validation process please see our psychometric factsheets and reports page.
What are the benefits of the Outcomes Stars?
The Outcomes Stars give you an evidence-based measurement tool to support keyworking in a way that is person-centred, collaborative and trauma-informed.
They work because they are underpinned with a sense of hope – that even when things are challenging, positive change in some way is always possible. Their detail and flexibility helps you to understand what’s likely to work for an individual while giving you more information to help you deliver effective services.
Why are the Outcomes Stars so effective?
- A clearer and more detailed picture of change. The Star measures not only end outcomes – for example gaining employment – but includes broader outcomes such as quality of life.
- An integral part of keywork. The Star is completed collaboratively vs self-reporting or a professional-only tool.
- Supporting action planning. The Star allows you to easily see information about the areas where support is needed and what that support should look like.
- Support for effective service delivery. The Stars helps your organisation to deliver support in a holistic, strengths-based and person-centred way.
- Tailored organisational support. Many measurement tools offer little to no support on how to use them. Using an Outcomes Star means you will get tailored support so you can understand whether the Star is a good fit, training so staff can use the Star effectively and access to the Star Online upgraded app.
Want to discover more about the Family Impact Star or any other Star? Get in touch with our friendly team who will be happy to answer your questions.
If you are based somewhere that is not listed above, please check out our International page to see what is available in your country.
Family Impact Star development collaborators
