Service improvement and practice development

CORC work with organisations and place-based systems to use data alongside nationally available evidence. We bring together children and young people and families, professionals and others to understand needs, strengths and opportunities. We collaborate to deliver evidence-informed actions plans.  

CORC have also developed a Best Practice Framework . This set of standards, self-assessment tools and guidance helps organisations improve the support they offer and demonstrate the impact of it.  Organisations whose activities meet best practice standards can apply for formal recognition by CORC. 

Service Improvement

We believe that outcome measures can be used to improve care. They should not be used as simply another process-driven management tool; instead, at every level of the system there should be a proactive, engaged and thoughtful consideration of what the data tells us. Our work in this area includes:

• Working with organisations to link what they do (the services they provide) with what they want to achieve (outcomes) so they can meet the needs of the local population
• Using information from outcome and feedback measures to improve individual support for children and young people, whole services and commissioning
• Supporting service providers to implement best practice standards in the use of outcome measures
• Enabling organisations to embed reviewing and reporting outcomes data as a standard part of service management and continuous improvement
• Supporting publicly-funded, voluntary and education organisations to measure the impact of the mental health and wellbeing support they provide
• Presenting data and information on outcomes in a meaningful and engaging way for different audiences including service users, practitioners and commissioners

CORC’s team of experts in outcome and feedback measurement can provide tailored support in any of these areas, recognising that the needs of each organisation will vary. We have also developed a Best Practice Framework - a set of standards, self-assessment tools and guidance which can help organisations improve the support they offer and demonstrate the impact of it. 

Best Practice Framework

The Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) Best Practice Framework is a set of standards, tools and guidance for ensuring the highest quality use of outcome and feedback measurement in organisations supporting children and young people’s mental health.  

All CORC members can access the framework. Full members can receive support using the framework for free as part of their membership. For anyone else interested in this, please get in touch: CORC@annafreud.org.

Organisations that implement the Best Practice Framework do so in collaboration with CORC’s team of experts in outcome and feedback measurement. The CORC team tailor their support to the needs of each organisation, helping them to apply best practice in the use of outcome and feedback measures. 

As a result of implementing the Framework, organisations: 

• improve outcome and feedback measurement, and ensure meaningful use of data to enhance service delivery 
• develop their ability to demonstrate best practice in outcome and feedback measurement 
• develop their ability to demonstrate effective use of data to improve service delivery and service user experience 
• encourage/foster staff and service user participation in meaningful use of outcome and feedback measures and resulting data.

...you can't stand still, you need to be thinking about what the next steps are and utilising that kind of [Best Practice] Framework, we realised where our gaps were.

Nicky Martin, on YPAS's journey to CORC Accreditation