Supporting young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness

  

The Approach

We first interviewed the charities CEO, who acted as our client, to establish their understanding of the problem and get to know the information. A range of existing documentation was reviewed including business plans, existing feedback from young people and information from their website. This allowed us to establish the project scope, including a list of staff and volunteers to be interviewed, and a basic interview plan.  

An initial assessment of the charities customers, service offers, operations, monitoring, reporting and evaluation processes was produced as a powerpoint slide. This proved to be immensely valuable to the Pro Bono team and the client, as it made clear information previously not in one place. 13 depth interviews were conducted, mainly using MS Teams, plus one site visit and informal discussions with other staff and young people using the service. 

 

The Client

Doorway is a charity working within Warwickshire to support young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, providing advice, accommodation and life skills training.

The Client's Problem

The client requested help to understand and suggest improvements to their monitoring and evaluation processes. There was a need to better understand and demonstrate how the charity was serving young people, and what could be improved

The Solution

  • Our solution was delivered in the form of an annotated MS Powerpoint slide deck, and a series of interactive discussions around this, iterating to include key points. 
  • The slide deck included a process map showing the journey of a young person through the various stages of support, from pre-registration to ‘off-boarding’ when support was no longer needed. 
  • A SWOT analysis was also presented and a series of suggestions for improvement. These focused both on the initial area of monitoring and evaluation, and also additional points picked up during the interviews, such as defining consistent terms to prevent confusion. 
  • We provided advice on options for automating collection of feedback from Young People, steering them away from a mobile phone App which might be difficult to manage and maintain, and towards online systems such as Microsoft Forms. 
  • The aim was to give the Doorway team a better understanding of their own processes, some positive suggestions for actions, and ownership of the implementation of these. 
  • In addition, an analysis of staff role descriptions was undertaken, summarising key tasks and responsibilities in a tabular form to clarify information previously spread across many documents. . 

The Benefits

  • The clients were very happy with the delivery and outcomes of the project. A major benefit was the clarity around processes that was produced, and our highlighting of different interpretations and terminology used by different staff. 
  • The project also provided Doorway with reassurance that both their staff and the young people using their service have a very positive view of the organisation and the enormous benefits it brings. 
  • The outputs will not only help Doorway to improve processes and monitoring, but will help in preparing bids for funding, as they enable clear identification of positive outcomes. 

 

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