Fulfilling Lives have collaborated with Stopover, a Brighton-based service supporting young women who are homeless or at risk of homelessness , to evaluate the impact of staff support initiatives. They wanted to explore the ways in which accommodation- based services could strengthen service delivery through the use of Trauma Informed Care (TIC) and Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE).
Stopover’s client base includes individuals with multiple and complex needs (‘MCN’). Client facing roles with clients who have MCN are recognised as being particularly challenging, and in need of multiple forms of workplace support. As such the project is on a journey to find new ways to help staff feel supported in their day-to-day work.
Fulfilling Lives provided monitoring and evidence gathering support to Stopover before, during and after new PIE and TIC initiatives were implemented to track the impact of these interventions. The evaluation report below provides a brief snapshot of this journey, and the impact some of these workforce interventions had on staff, clients and the wider project.
Stopover chose to focus on the following interventions:
- staff support and training through reflective practice
- restorative practice for staff and clients to further promote constructive working relationships
Impacts included:
- Feedback from staff during interviews indicated that peer learning among the team was developing.
- All the workers and managers agreed that reflective practice was changing how the team work with and think about clients with complex needs.
- Both workers and management felt that worker’s skills were improving, and a skills gap was being filled by reflective practice sessions.
- Over the evaluation period, staff self-reported that their improved awareness of the motivations behind client behaviours were enabling them to defuse and work with these presentations in a more confident and effective way.
You can read the full report here.
Fulfilling Lives have given us an excellent starting point from which to build on our knowledge and understanding to ensure that the staff team is both trauma informed and resilient going forward with the understanding that only a well-trained and highly resilient workforce will ensure positive outcomes for some of the most vulnerable young women in the city.
Stevie Graves, Stopover Housing Services Manager/Safeguarding Lead, Impact Initiatives
