Using data to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Red Rose Recovery’s services.
Red Rose Recovery was established as a charity in 2012 and has become nationally recognised as a pioneering organisation in developing recovery systems and creating opportunities for people affected by substance misuse, dual diagnosis and offending behaviours. They provide service users with peer-led therapeutic support, training, and volunteering opportunities.
The request
Red Rose Recovery uses the platform ‘Views’ to manage and store information about the people who use its services, including their engagement in activities and information on outcomes. The charity sought the help of a statistician to analyse this data and in particular they required advice on studying the link between engagement in the service and overall outcomes; a relationship that is often observed as a positive correlation but hadn’t yet been statistically quantified
The approach
Alice Heaton was the volunteer statistician assigned to the project. After having tidied the dataset, Alice created a profile for each active service user and performed statistical analysis to uncover which services were more effective than others based on the number of positive outcomes.
The result
The findings were written up into a final report that discussed the relative effectiveness of each of the services. Alice provided recommendations to the charity to broaden their data collection methods and improve data quality. The findings were included in the charity’s annual review, and the recommendations were taken forward and successfully implemented.
Impact and benefits
Scott Maskell, IT & Communications Manager at Red Rose Recovery, wrote:
‘The work with the Statistician’s for Society Programme was a very positive experience for us here at Red Rose Recovery. Alice, the statistician assigned to our project, was a perfect match for the project scope of analysing our organisation’s data to find key themes and recommendations for improvements and looking at how we can use data more effectively as an organisation.
The project provided valuable insights on our data which have already been incorporated into our annual review and beyond that, will help to inform future funding bids. Furthermore, the recommendations put forward by Alice, will help to improve the organisations data collection and the efficiency of the organisation, allowing our resources to have a greater impact and improve the lives of more people.’