Key Highlights
What was this case study? How Bolster Community, a family support and community organisation in Northern Ireland, uses the Family Star Plus and My Star to track meaningful change in early intervention work.
Why was the Star chosen? Bolster Community’s Interim Chief Executive Officer was looking for a simple, visual tool that staff and families could use together, in a service where progress rarely looks like a single dramatic turnaround.
What was the impact? A shared, visual way for families to see their own progress, a simpler and more consistent way to report to funders, and a tool now built directly into local commissioning.
“One step can be the real change for someone” – Allison Slater, Interim Chief Executive Officer
About Bolster Community
Bolster Community is a Northern Ireland charity that has supported families, adults with learning disabilities and autism, and older people for over 20 years, working across early intervention, family support and community-based services. Their work with families includes evidence-based training programmes for parents and children and a project that works directly with children, schools and parents to offer support for children who may not be attending school.
About Family Star Plus
The Family Star Plus was developed to help support effective parenting. It helps parents to focus on ten key areas of life ‘My children’s health’, ‘How I feel’, and ‘my children’s behaviour’ and give clarity on where to focus next.
About My Star
My Star is for children and young people in a wide range of settings., and is primarily aimed at children aged 7-14. It is designed to be child-specific rather than context specific. It can be used to work with children in vulnerable families, children in our of home care and those with foster carers.
Measuring change you can’t always see
Bolster’s family support work sits firmly in early intervention, stepping in well before things reach a crisis point. Because support followed journeys that were less clear than at crisis intervention points the challenge for the organisation was how to track a clear Journey of Change. Staff could do good work without necessarily seeing that reflected back to them, and families could lose motivation if they felt nothing was changing, says Allison Slater, Interim Chief Executive Officer at Bolster.
The Bolster Community were looking for something simple. Having looked at other tools, including some used in mental health services, they found the Star’s approach distinctive. Allison felt the collaborative nature of the Star was a big draw for the service. “It’s not somebody sitting in an office saying this is what we’ve done, you have to do it with your service users… they’re seeing the benefit of what you’re doing, and your members of staff see the benefit and what they’re doing…it’s a really easy tool to use,” she says.
Introducing and implementing the Star meant practitioners had to overcome some initial assumptions about how the Star works. Some staff believed every family needed to reach the top of the scale or they were failing, says Allison. Staff became comfortable after the personalised training session, which focused on real examples from their own work rather than generic scenarios. This practical approach was key in moving staff from simply using the Star to truly understanding its value.
Allison explains: “People progressing just one small step, that’s a big win in our level of work, one step can be the real change for someone…it’s that flexibility.”
Changing expectations, evolving support
Allison says as Star use developed it supported the way the team was already working by deepening their expectations around support. The Family Star was introduced right form the beginning of the Family Support service so they were able to focus on measurable change in a holistic way. Using the Star helped the team to see what was working and where they might need to do things a different way.
A parent's story of change
One example has stayed with the team. A young mother of two was referred with very low confidence and poor mental health, initially resistant to the idea that anything about her situation could improve. The mother found it hard to believe anyone who said she was doing well. Bolster kept working with her over an extended period, reviewing her Star roughly every two months. “She began to come to the conclusion that things were going better, because she could see it in the discussions around where she was on the Star…it’s that lovely gradual steps system that makes it much easier for people to see,” says Allison.
Gradually, she left the social services register, and her confidence grew significantly. The Bolster Community team believes that what truly made the difference was her ability to see her own progress visualised and to participate in the conversation, rather than having it decided for her.
What has this meant for families?
Families supported by Bolster Community have responded very positively to the Outcomes Star says Allison. Many are pleasantly surprised to see their progress made visible, sometimes in ways they hadn’t recognised themselves. For parents of children dealing with anxiety, the ability to see concrete progress on the Star provides meaningful reassurance and confidence, in contrast to a vague sense that things might be improving. Allison explains: “So, actually, using the Star, when you sit down with the parent, it let’s them see they have made progress, it keeps them motivated.”
What has this meant for the organisation?
The Star has transformed Bolster Community’s reporting to its board and funders. Rather than just listing activities, engagements, or the number of families supported, the organisation can now share independent, outcome-based evidence of real change.
There has been a shift with local funding partners who have now embedded Outcomes Star reporting into their support contracts says Allison. Data has also been used for funding proposals. Bolster Community now submits distance-travelled reports each quarter, replacing the much more time-consuming and complex reporting process.
Internally, the Star has also become a quality assurance tool. Reviewing patterns across a staff member’s Stars, particularly for newer team members, helps managers spot where practice may need further support and development.
Bolster Community has been using case studies and storytelling alongside Star data, which is useful. “You have evidence that you’re doing a good job that has come from the individuals themselves,” explains Allison.
Click here to learn more about Family Star Plus, and here for My Star