Earlier this year, Manchester Metropolitan University’s (MMU) Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) were contracted to evaluate the Kirklees Better Outcomes Partnership (KBOP) and Greater Manchester Better Outcomes Partnership (GMBOP) programmes. As part of this evaluation, they partnered with People’s Voice Media, who have used the Community Reporting methodology to allow people who access aspects of KBOP and GMBOP’s support to share their experiences of the programme. These stories provided insights into current practice and how services might be improved and, where relevant, the insights were mapped to outcomes in a Theory of Change produced with PERU for both KBOP (Fig. 1) and GMBOB (Fig. 2).

KBOP

KBOP was launched in September 2019, commissioned by Kirklees Council. The service is for people at risk of homelessness. They take a person-centred approach, tailoring their support to individuals who access their services, which offer support across four main areas: housing, health and wellbeing, education and employment, and support with domestic violence.

The stories gathered from people who use KBOP’s services focused on the areas of mental health, education and employment, and the importance of the person-centred approach. They show that the service is achieving many of its aims and that its person-centred approach has been warmly received. In fact, several storytellers say there is nothing that needs to be done to improve the service. In which case, the main recommendation for KBOP going forward would be to keep providing its service without stagnating – keep doing what works but be open to changes to allow it to meet more outcomes.

GMBOP

GMBOP is a social enterprise set up to co-produce and deliver the Greater Manchester Youth Homelessness Prevention Programme. This is a 4-year programme targeting young homeless people in Greater Manchester. It is referred to locally as ‘Pathfinder’.

Some key points from across the stories are:

• The young people’s experiences of the service has been positive both in terms of their interactions with the professionals working in the service and the impact it has had on their lives
• When compared to other similar services, Pathfinder is seen as being more suitable for the young people due to (a) the person-centred approach and (b) how it helps them navigate challenges to accessing different forms of support
• The young people are reassured by the support they are receiving and suggest that it will be key preventing a return to homelessness

We have produced our findings for this project in full in a series of reports, and there is also a feature article on the Community Reporter website that goes into detail around the benefits of the person-centred approach of both KBOP and GMBOP.