Developing a Hospice Impact Framework

“Impact is the difference you make. By focusing on your impact, you can make more of a difference through your work. This means planning what impact you want to have and how best to achieve it, collecting information about your impact, assessing what impact you’re having, communicating this information, and learning from it.” [1]

Project overview

In 2022, Princess Alice Hospice began to think about the difference it makes as an organisation. Although the hospice already evaluated its services, it wanted to develop a whole-organisation approach that would give deeper insight into its impact and effectiveness.

The hospice set up an action learning group, made up of relevant people from the  clinical, community engagement, marketing and communication and education teams. Each team routinely gathered information and feedback, but there were differences in the type, frequency and how the data was analysed and used for future development. . Although each department was working towards a shared organisational strategy, they also had their own goals and objectives. The data being collected was presented in different ways, which were aimed at different (but complementary) audiences.

The group worked together to:

• identify gaps in the data
• identify challenges in data collection
• devise innovative ways to capture data
• plan how and when to review and analyse data
• identify how learning would be communicated to different audiences
• share data when relevant.

Outcomes

The team developed a set of key principles, which informed the development of the framework:

• There should be a clear identification of what aspect of our work we wanted to focus on
• Data should be obtainable with a proportional amount of effort
• Quantitative and qualitative data should be included
• There should be a defined opportunity for appropriate scrutiny of the data, analysis and learning
• There should be a mechanism by which learning could be incorporated into future delivery plans
• The results of the Impact Framework would be transparent and represented in a number of ways to suit the different audiences

The impact framework was piloted and refined, and is now embedded in the hospice’s governance processes.

Key facilitators

Princess Alice had a shared understanding that as a charity, it needed to demonstrate its impact to all audiences. The hospice team realised that collectively they could embark on a journey to better understand how an Impact Framework can help achieve this.

The action learning group approach helped the team to learn together and allowed for sharing of experience, resources and new knowledge.

Having the expertise of a marketing and communication specialist was invaluable in designing presentation material which best represented the hospice’s impact to audiences who require different styles of communication.

Challenges

Collecting data can be difficult. People can move on quickly and it isn’t easy to go back to them for further information. This could mean that the hospice isn’t able to measure the long-term impact of its services, and might have to rely on other people’s data to do so. Understanding what and where data is published by relevant national and local organisations e.g. the office of National Statistics (ONS) and Integrated Care System is helpful.

It can be difficult to be confident that your intervention has directly brought about change for an individual. At Princess Alice, several long term processes are in place to capture longer term impact, such as surveys of education participants six months after the event. It is a limitation that the contributors to this type of feedback are self-selected and, in some cases, need to give prior permission to be contacted.

Courtesy bias is when people say positive things to be polite. This can be a particular challenge for hospices because patients, carers and families are grateful for the care they have received and want to be supportive. Princess Alice makes sure any approaches for feedback are carefully worded and aim to encourage a range of opinions, including suggestions for improvement.

The hospice plans to increase the use of digital tools to support the Impact Framework. They will also be including more departments in the process, so that the hospice can gain more insight into its impact.

There is ongoing work to translate the impact reports into formats that are meaningful for different audiences.

1. NPC. The code of good impact practice [Internet]. 2023. [Cited 2023 Mar 31].