Understanding the impact of support at Jami
Jami’s Dangoor Children and Young Person’s Service supports the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the Jewish community through one-to-one sessions, ongoing assessments and signposting. After a successful pilot from 2022 to 2023, the service has expanded to provide vital support to three schools in London.
Background
Jami joined as a CORC member in 2023 following an evaluation they had commissioned of their pilot Children and Young Person’s Service. The evaluation had reported that those attending the service experienced a statistically significant decrease in emotional difficulties, and improvements in levels of strengths and wellbeing - as measured from self-reported questionnaires. Qualitative feedback from staff and service users was also positive: young people valued the community atmosphere, the empowering approach of Jami workers, and the high-quality support for a range of difficulties. Jami used the recommendations from this report to understand what worked and what did not during the pilot phase, to refine their approach to measuring outcomes, and to develop their approach in the rollout of the programme. This included further staff training on goal-setting and choosing a different measurement tool to be more aligned to their intended outcomes. The evaluation also supported fundraising efforts to further expand the service.
Analysis and reporting
Jami joined CORC to support their data analysis and provide external reporting for their monitoring and evaluation. CORC worked closely with Jami to decide on their priorities for analysis, producing a report which included:
- the number of young people with outcome measures data at two time points
- analysis of individual change on the Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale , the Youth Recovery Outcomes Counter (YROC) and the Goal Based Outcomes tool
- an age breakdown to compare the outcomes for each measure for the 11-17 and 18-25 cohort
- recommendations for exploring the results.
Clear charts, tables and commentary in the report made the findings easy to understand and interpret and suitable for sharing with a range of people. Example analysis and reporting is available here.
Learning
The CORC report helped Jami to reflect on what they do and how to improve. As a result, there have been a number of benefits and insights which include:
- evidence of the impact of support for young people accessing Jami which can support future fundraising efforts
- demonstrating to staff their impact and the improvement in staff confidence in goal setting, which had initially been a learning curve during the pilot phase
- improved understanding of the impact of support for different age groups which prompted further discussions of the reasons for this
- differing completion rates for measures led to considerations about staff development and training needs for specific measures
- the YROC data enabled staff to identify that certain aspects captured in the questionnaire (e.g., physical activity) are not the prime focus of support. Jami now focus on using YROC as a holistic assessment and check-in, recognising that the intervention can’t influence all twelve of the indicator areas
- the data prompted further questions about the accessibility of the measures for neurodivergent young people
- the ability to track change and make comparisons across their ongoing annual data reports.
Mya Goschalk, Quality and Impact Manager at Jami, reflects on this journey:
We are looking forward to continuing our work with Jami on the next part of their journey.