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St Christopher’s is a charity creating brighter futures for children and young people in care. As a leading provider of children's services, we always seek to develop our practice and find new ways of supporting young people.
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All our services have the same goal: to support children and young people to fulfil their potential, grow into independent adults and have happy, successful futures.
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There are many ways you can support St Christopher's work with children and young people. Find out how you can help young people reach their goals.
Celebrating achievements
Measuring outcomes in children’s social care
We aim to improve young people’s self-esteem so they believe in themselves and feel confident enough to reach for their dreams. Charting how far a young person has come shows them that they are able to achieve.
The Outcomes™ Star
St Christopher’s use the Outcomes Star™ to help young people decide what goals they want to achieve, track their progress and prepare them for independent living. It allows us to benchmark across our own services as well as against national averages.
The Outcomes Star™ is a tool that a young person and their key worker complete together. They are asked to rate themselves on a 1-10 scale on a range of behaviours, attitudes and skills like their physical health, ability to manage money and motivation levels. These ratings are then mapped onto the star model.
Staff work with young people to update their star every month they are living with us. Not only does this information allow us to tailor a support plan to meet the young person’s needs, it also shows how far they have come with our help and care.
I find it a really useful tool to use as a basis for communication with other professionals to demonstrate how we are working with young people. It is also key for helping staff identify areas that young people need to develop and helps in setting goals in accordance to this. One young person I have worked with has Asperger's and finds the star very useful because it is much easier for him to understand his progress with a visual representation.
Celebrating success
We are really proud of everything our young people achieve and remind them of this every day. However, we also think it’s important to mark their successes in a more formal way.
All of our services throw an annual award ceremony to celebrate young people’s accomplishments over the last 12 months. The activity is chosen by the young people, whether it’s a themed party, a meal at their favourite restaurant or a trip to a theme park. It’s a great opportunity for everyone to come together, reflect on the past year and have fun.
It's so important to acknowledge the constant progression made by these children. To honour all their achievements in one evening is truly a credit to the foster carers. It was a night that the children shall cherish.