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Human Learning Systems meets the Outcomes Star

 

This blog has been authored by Joy MacKeith, co-founder of Triangle and co-author of the Outcomes Star suite of tools.

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I am a newcomer to Human Learning Systems, having discovered this work as part of my research for Triangle’s new report Enabling Help. Triangle is the social enterprise behind the widely used Outcomes Star.  The report synthesises Triangle’s learning from 18 years of working with service providers and the people they help to model, support and measure personal change. I am profoundly struck by the similarities between HLS and Enabling Help in both analysis and prescription despite their very different starting points.  

Different starting points, the same conclusions

HLS started as an analysis of the failings of the New Public Management paradigm.  It has gone on to articulate an alternative vision for public management and from there to create and support practical projects that bring that vision to life.  

The Outcomes Star, in contrast, started as a practical answer to a problem – “how can service providers evidence that they are making a difference in a way that really reflects and supports what they do?” From there we articulated the vision that was implicit in the tool.  And from there we have created an analysis of how the wider service delivery system and the ideas on which it is based get in the way of its stated aims.   

The fact that these two independent and very different journeys have arrived in such a similar place only adds weight to the veracity of their conclusions.  

Enabling Help

So let me tell you something about Triangle’s learning journey and as I do that highlight the read across to HLS. 

After creating 44 Stars based on over 150 collaborative workshops with front-line workers and the people they are working with, many more interviews, and a lot of drafting, feedback, piloting and re-drafting, we have really learnt a lot about what works when supporting individual change.  Pulling that learning together we have identified six key principles to Enabling Help – it is help that is:

• Relational – based on a trusting, caring human relationship
• Motivational – building hope and belief that change is possible
• Developmental – valuing the skills and abilities of the person being helped and supporting them to build new capabilities
• Holistic – taking in their situation in the round
• Flexible – tailored to what this particular person needs
• Contextual – recognising wider issues and factors in the person’s past and present

Our conclusions share a lot with the Psychologically Informed Environments Movement, Nesta’s ‘Good Help and Bad Help’ report and Hilary Cotham’s book ‘Radical Help’.  All are pointing to the central importance or relationship, shared humanity and a holistic, tailored response. 

The need for a paradigm shift

Because Triangle also trains and support service providers to work with the Outcomes Star in practice we have also learnt a lot in these last 18 years about what gets in the way of delivering this kind of help – and of using the Outcomes Star in the way that is intended.   There are lots of issues, none of which will be news to the HLS community, – a targets culture that focuses attention more on the numbers than the people, tightly bound procedures that constrain front-line workers and focus attention on the organisation’s processes rather than the person being helped.  A research agenda that searches for the holy grail of the perfect intervention rather than exploring how to embed flexibility and responsiveness.  

Like HLS we believe that the underlying problem is the paradigm or the mental models that frame service commissioning and delivery.  We have identified four different paradigms which are currently shaping practice at different levels of the service delivery system. Each one is borrowed from another sphere of study (medicine, bureaucracy, economics and the natural sciences). Each is based on assumptions that don’t fit in the complex world of people meeting challenges and working to improve their lives.  Like HLS, we are making the case for a new paradigm – one based on what we know about human beings and what we all need to thrive. The Enabling Help report argues that that means that social provision should be based on the human sciences and particularly the discoveries of human neuroscience.  The essence of each paradigm is summed up in this table. 

Paradigm	Focus	Person receiving the service	Service	Key assumptions
Medical	The helper	Patient	Treatment	The person is sick or flawed and the helper has the answers
Bureaucratic	The organisation providing the service	Recipient	Process	Fairness and risk management are best served through standardisation
Market / Economic	The commissioner	Consumer	Product	Performance is maximised through competition and financial incentives
Natural Sciences	The type of intervention	Subject	Formula	What works can be identified and replicated independently of context
Human Sciences	The person being helped	Collaborator / Partner	Enablement	Relationships that are enabling are the key to change for individuals, organisations and systems

We believe that without this fundamental shift in the ideas on which the service delivery system is based attempts to deliver Enabling Help will always meet impossible barriers.  It’s a bit like an iceberg with the service someone receives being the bit that is visible above the waterline.  Below the water the way the service is managed and commissioned and the policy framework within which it is delivered fundamentally shape and determine what happens at the front-line.  We need to change everything below the waterline to achieve the changes to the service the person receives. The illustration shows how the right mental models can enable the right kind of help.

As well as calling for a paradigm shift there is read across between HLS and Triangle’s vision of Enabling Help in many of the specifics of our recommendations and approach.

Human: HLS describes its values foundation as ‘supporting human freedom and flourishing’. Triangle’s vision is of a world in which ‘everyone is able to thrive’ and is calling for the human sciences to be the primary knowledge base underpinning public service 

Learning: HLS argues for learning as the only viable strategy when working in a complex environment. Triangle emphasises that the primary purpose of measuring should always be learning.  In Enabling Help we argue that commissioners should hold providers to account for learning rather than particular targets – which can be arbitrary and, as HLS points out, are often impacted by many factors outside the providers control.  

Systems: HLS argues that outcomes are an emergent property of systems and that therefore the system is the focus for intervention.  The Outcomes Star provides the person being helped with an intuitive and manageable map of their ‘life as system’ which they can use to reflect on goals, first steps and progress.  And because the Star also provides collatable data, it can also be a vehicle for learning about what is working at service and programme level.  Used well it can provide a ‘golden thread’ supporting collaborative sense-making for the individual, the team, the organisation and commissioners.  

In conclusion

I believe there is a real complementarity between the vision, methods and focus of HLS and the Outcomes Star and our wider vision of Enabling Help.  The Star’s focus on the front-line conversation between a helper and a person being helped complements the HLS focus on service systems.  And using the Outcomes Star at the front-line could provide a way to link learning at different system levels.    We are hoping to find organisations, places and perhaps even regions or countries where we can explore in practice if and how the Outcomes Star can support an HLS approach to public management.  If you would like to be part of a project like this please do get in touch.

We have learnt that the full potential of using the Outcomes Star cannot be realised within a service system that is disjointed and focused more on targets than learning.  For Enabling Help to become a reality we need the paradigm shift that HLS is calling for.  I am very pleased to add Triangle’s voice to this growing movement for change.

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Joy MacKeith is co-founder of Triangle and co-author of the Outcomes Star suite of tools.

Enabling Help was launched on 29th September and can be downloaded from https://www.outcomesstar.org.uk/enablinghelp/ .

Register to attend the Enabling Help webinar on 3rd November 2021.

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Format: Blogs

Tags: Control , Measurement , Understanding Variation , Complexity , Personalisation , Understanding Variety , Tools and Techniques , Purpose , Scale , Public Services , Learning

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