I am up to my ears in data. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? It really isn’t.
There are two sets I’m wading through. Clean Slate now has impact data on the ‘distance travelled’ by thousands of participants in its Quids in! Money Guidance programme. More than 1,300 social tenants also responded to our recent cost of living survey, and we now need to analyse that data. One provides us with evidence of the financial support needs of under-served parts of our community. The other proves there is something we can do about it – and that we are doing it.
It would be easy to dismiss this as putting together our bragging rights. As a social enterprise, though, data drives our business. Whether revenue comes to us in the form of grants, contracts or commissions, we treat each service as a customer promise to be fulfilled. This drives our sustainability and helps us deepen our relationship with our partners who carry the cash. But it also means we can benchmark our impact and constantly strive to find ways to do better, for clients and those paying customers. This drives continuous improvement.
Roughly speaking, if we help one tenant in every hundred we work with to swerve eviction, our service pays for itself
Our Money Health-Check process benchmarks need and participant progression. Reports on our impact on Stonewater Housing tenants, for example, shows us that 57 per cent were in debt or arrears and not receiving debt advice at the start of the service. By the end, just 13 per cent had not yet got this under control. It takes months or years for someone to take the daunting step of accessing formal support, so this is really encouraging. Some don’t need advice at all, just a cold hard look at their finances and the confidence to chat to creditors. We’re not a regulated service – we don’t need to be. We can do a benefits check and and income/expenditure review. We can help them open their post. But most importantly, we can coach people through the steps to take for themselves. We nurture sustainable change, not quick fixes.
In the context of the landlords we work with, the impact on tenants is a high priority but not the highest. The government is ramping up demands on social landlords to demonstrate value for money. By measuring our impact, we give them the means to show the return on their investment in the Money Guidance service. The figures above show reduced, unmanaged debts from the tenants’ point of view. Add that to the cost landlords understand of chasing arrears, or writing some of that off and the incredible, cumulative cost of evictions and voids, and we have a business case. Roughly speaking, if we help one tenant in every hundred we work with to swerve eviction, our service pays for itself. That’s before all the arrears we can reduce among the ninety nine others.
Our Money Health-Checks explore 25 financial resilience indicators. In 2022, we could see the average ‘score’ for participants at the start is 15.2 (60.8%) and 19.4 (77.6%) by the end. We’ve introduced KPIs for staff that reflect the social impact we want to continuously increase. The process is neither punitive nor commercially driven, but the ‘nudge’ effect is impossible to resist. They will always strive to beat the average by helping participants more. They might lean towards the quickest wins and even this is good for clients because that’s what builds momentum and a belief that things can change. The longer-term changes are more likely to follow when people trust our process and believe in themselves. KPIs are usually a tool for cold-nosed management but we’re proud of how they feed into ways we can show partners we mean business about their contracts.
This month, we are contacting social landlords to share our experience of supporting tenants and how this directly supports housing providers themselves
Not all our partners are quite on board. Our recent experience of central government procurement processes, within Department of Work and Pensions at least, is that they seem too crude to benefit from social impact metrics. Contracts are awarded on promises and cost, which is not the same as value for money at all. Although support services for jobseekers have largely been outsourced, presumably allowing experts to design and deliver the best services, contract requirements are devised by DWP staff. To win contracts, providers just need to tick the boxes and be the cheapest. It’s a race to the bottom and we’ve started being very selective about what we bid for. We know we can prove we can deliver but it’s not how that system works – even when we’ve delivered it for them before.
This month, we are contacting social landlords across the UK, to share our experience of supporting tenants and how this directly supports housing providers themselves. Of course, there are colourful case studies bringing the data to life but we know it’s the business case that will open the doors. We are ultimately talking about preventing homelessness, and combatting hardship and poverty along the way. The individuals we speak to will invariably agree it’s the right thing to do. But only the pounds and pence will sway the decision. And only the data will make the case.
If you would like to chat to us about our work then please drop me a line at [email protected].
Image: RODNAE Productions / Pexels
