IYCL is a programme run by It’s Your Life, a well-established, highly successful charity, working with disadvantaged families in Tower Hamlets, London. The charity were keen to grow the impact of their programme by expanding into a new region outside of London.
Unpicking the processes
In order to grow the programme without compromising the quality and fidelity of the original concept, the charity recognized the need to fully document the content and processes used in their learning model.
This was carried out in two phases. Phase one involved unpicking and documenting the input-process-output model for the programme. Through this analysis we were able to make explicit all of the important and implicit inputs, processes, and outputs within the programme that were key in generating the improvement in parenting. An additional benefit of this analysis was that it enabled us to re-model and streamline the model, removing low impact processes, so that the effectiveness of the programme could be improved.
Once this had been done, we then, through observation of each of the sessions ‘live’ and discussion between the existing presenter team, documented the content of each of the sessions. Doing this has been of huge benefit to the consistency and quality of the programme across the team. As the programme had not previously been formalized, there had developed an inconsistency of delivery and quality between different presenters. Some were not clear enough about the input-process-output model.
Quality assurance
As a result of documenting the contents and processes of the programme, a detailed QA process with clear documentation was developed. This brought two huge benefits. First, the charity was now much clearer, and so were their presenters about the KASH (knowledge, attitudes, skills and habits) required to deliver the programme, so that it has maximum impact on the parents and their children. Secondly, the charity were then in a position to be clear about content for the person specification for prospective new presenters.
The impact
The charity has been able to expand successfully to work with deprived communities on Merseyside by training two new full-time presenters in 2017. As a result, the charity has more than trebled the number of programmes being run without any compromise in quality.
