St Giles Trust
1. Description of the St Giles Trust
The Trust helps homeless people with support needs to build successful lives in their communities. It currently provides: an assessment and support centre, and pre-vocational training (in Camberwell) street outreach to rough sleepers in Southwark and Lambeth, and prison-based services in London.
2. Purpose of grant
1999/2000 Audit of needs of service users
2001/2002 Development of an outcome focussed day centre service
3. Outcomes/results of activities funded by grants
The needs audit enabled the Trust to identify unmet need, especially in the area of substance abuse, and take action to deliver appropriate services.
Development of outcome focussed services is still in progress. The Trust originally ran a traditional open access day centre, focussed very much on service delivery processes. This has been changed into a structured assessment service, which provides clients with support plans, and focuses more on outcomes - the changes made in their lives. Key lessons learned to date include:
- When deciding what outcomes to aim for, it is important to identify what the "active ingredient" of your service is, and to work out what outcomes can realistically be delivered. For example, an advice service can deliver an outcome in which clients are better informed about their choices. A detoxification service can enable a client to stop drinking or using drugs. Neither can deliver the other's outcome. It is important to be realistic about this, and avoid projecting desirable headline outcomes onto actual services.
- Robust monitoring systems are critical to effective outcome management programmes. It is worth spending more time than you think necessary to test them conceptually, and train staff to use them. In addition, the first system to be used is unlikely to deliver all the necessary information. It is important to re-visit at the three and six month stages.
- Day centres don't have to be run the old fashioned way. Asking people for information up front, and requiring them to engage with services does not frighten off the vast majority of day centre users. Even people with quite severe mental health services can use this type of service. A more proactive service gives greater control to staff, and can encourage clients with lower level needs to set up their own semi-supported groups, or get involved with education and training.
4. Contact
Daniel Currie (Director),
tel. 020 7703 7000
emails dan1elc@hotmail.com or info@stgilestrust.org.uk
