Research and analysis

The Good Help Hub – Liverpool

Published 10 April 2024

Applies to England

Partnership for People and Place

The PfPP programme has piloted a new approach to cross-government working to improve local outcomes and efficiency of policy and programmes designed and delivered in place. PfPP funded 13 local government partners to deliver pilot projects focusing on hyper-local issues that could be tackled through better central or local government coordination. The overall objective of the PfPP programme was to test whether closer working between different central government departments and local places can bring measurable benefits to people who live there.

Local background – Liverpool

The Good Help Hub brought together multiple agencies and public services under one roof for beneficiaries. The project focused on Croxteth where there are high levels of inequality between neighbourhoods, and pupil attendance is below city and national averages.

The project’s initial intention was to work with one hundred of the most complex individuals or families within Croxteth. However, it was apparent early in the pilot that there were many organisations working and often ‘competing’ to support people with multiple and complex needs. This included DfE’s Family Hub model which was being developed within Children’s Services at Liverpool City Council. In response, the pilot team iterated their approach to better fit into the existing landscape and provide a resource which would scaffold around existing services. The Good Help Hub targeted those individuals and families who were not known to services, whose needs were multiple and complex. Importantly, the Good Help Hub aimed to provide a resource for Universal Services to refer into and for those accessing more specialised service provision to be stepped ‘down’ into.^{[footnote 1]}

The Hub was intended to provide a more localised centre for individuals who required help based on the “20-minute neighbourhood” concept where individuals do not need to travel far to receive assistance. Individuals could reach the Hub through a range of approaches including: self-referrals, other agencies signposting people to the Hub, the multi-agency Good Help Team identifying people through their outreach and engagement work. These individuals were then directly targeted for inclusion in the project.

Central government involvement

The pilot team intended to work with central government partners to support efforts to share data and intelligence across local authority, housing, voluntary and community sectors, police and schools. As highlighted in the Good Help Hub delivery plan, it was believed central government “could help remove fears (real or imagined) over this more proactive approach to data sharing.”^{[footnote 2]}

The Good Help Hub team set up exploratory conversations with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department for Health, NHS England, Ministry of Justice, and Home Office in September 2022 to start developing relationships between the Liverpool team and central government departments. However, the Good Help Hub team felt that they were unable to build on these engagements, due to a limited readiness to define their approach and articulate their ‘needs’ from central government at earlier stages of PfPP.^{[footnote 3]} This limited what meetings could achieve as there was no clarity about how central government could best add value to the pilot. The pilot team intends to share insights from the Good Help Hub with central government once the pilot concludes.

Delivery plans	Meetings	Visits	Involvement in delivery
DLUHC, DWP, DfE, HO, MoJ, DHSC were highlighted in the initial delivery plan as departments with a potential interest in the pilot.	DWP, MoJ, HO, DHSC, DfE were involved in ad hoc meetings with the project team.	DWP, MoJ, HO, DCMS attended a visit to Liverpool.	The local DWP team, and a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) are members of the Good Help Hub.

What was delivered?

Despite initial challenges engaging local public service teams and building relationships, the Good Help Hub became operational in January 2023. The team began implementation with a 12-week set-up period, where various local services joining the Hub came together for training and learning workshops. This included the local DWP, local schools and education services, Croxteth housing associations and Merseyside Police. Over the duration of the project more than 25 services from across Liverpool engaged with the Hub. Project leads emphasised the importance of this 12-week learning period to get to know each other and the local neighbourhood, seeing this as a pre-requisite to future similar initiatives.

By the end of March 2023, over 550 individuals used the Good Help Hub to enquire about accessing public services, surpassing the original goal of 100 individuals. The team was active in community outreach to make residents aware of the Hub by going door-to-door, visiting community centres and organisations, and having public service centres tell their beneficiaries about the Hub.

An internal evaluation conducted a small survey with beneficiaries of the Hub asking them to rate its usefulness. When asked, on a scale of 1-10 how useful has the Good Help Hub been, the mean score overall was 9.6. While the survey was only completed by 21 users, and therefore lacks representativeness, this shows emerging evidence of high satisfaction with the service provision and advice offered through the Hub.

The range of public services involved have all committed to basing their staff in the Hub for an additional three months after the PfPP completion date in March 2023, recognising the perceived benefits of working in place.

Local communities

Individuals gained improved access to public services by reducing barriers and centralising support in one place. The Good Help Hub provided a central place to access information that is less than a 20-minute journey for those within Croxteth. Those in the local community requiring access to multiple public services can now do so with greater ease under one roof.

As word spread within the community, the numbers of beneficiaries attending the Hub exceeded expectations. The most sought-after services within the Hub according to the project lead related to housing needs or issues. Around 50 of those seeking help at the Hub sought support for accessing employment, of which three of these individuals have since secured employment, highlighting initial evidence of long-term intended outcomes.

In many instances, individuals also required help that involved the police or understanding the benefits system (although at the time of evaluation, these instances had not yet been quantified). Additionally, the Good Help Hub serves as a place for socialising, for example Bacon Butty Fridays offered a warm place for people in Croxteth to meet and network with others in the community. This in turn helps improve mental wellbeing.

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Delivery partners & local government

The services involved in the Hub have developed a new culture of working that includes better cooperation, communication and understanding of how other services work. This has improved the “journey” for individuals as they seek assistance. For example, it has resulted in services supporting individuals who they may not have had previous access to, with Hub staff signposting individuals seeking housing help onto Merseyside police.

Services are co-located at the Hub, and participate in briefings, meetings and workshops to facilitate improved joined-up working and case management. This opens the door towards further opportunities for collaboration between services in the future. The project lead described how enhanced collaboration between the various services and partners involved in the Hub has had a notable benefit by reducing duplication elsewhere in the area and joining up service delivery.

Snapshot: Breakeven analysis

Breakeven analysis provides an estimate of the level of change in outcomes within each of the pilot areas that would be necessary for the pilot benefits to meet costs. Where there is an absence of medium- or long-term person-level outcomes data, a breakeven analysis can provide an indication of how many beneficiaries would need to achieve specific outcomes for the programme to achieve a net positive economic value. Breakeven analysis has been conducted on outcomes identified in each pilot’s Theory of Change, for which monetisable benefits could be estimated through the Understanding Society Survey.^{[footnote 4]}

Based on the evidence available to date, it appears likely that the Good Help Hub project will have achieved breakeven in terms of person-level outcomes. This breakeven does not account for workforce development and system level outcomes such as improved information sharing resulting from closer coordination of local services, as well as strengthened local VCS capacity. Therefore, while the breakeven results are positive for the Good Help Hub, it is likely that there is additional value unaccounted for in this analysis.

The Good Help Hub targets several wellbeing variables and behavioural skills in individuals or families within Croxteth by providing a drop-in service for individuals seeking access to various support services. Over the short-term, the Good Help Hub aimed to improve user networks, access to services, health and wellbeing as well as ‘feeling more in control’. The extent to which these outcomes are associated with marginal changes in life satisfaction was explored through statistical analysis of the Understanding Society survey.

In consultation with the Good Help Hub project team, the following outcomes from Understanding Society were used within the breakeven analysis.^{[footnote 5]} These align with specific person-level outcomes specified within the Good Help Hub Theory of Change, as highlighted below.

Outcomes specified in Good Help Hub Theory of Change	Outcomes used in breakeven analysis
There is an improved sense of connection, trust and belonging, influence and control amongst participants from the local community.	Good neighbourhood
There is an improved sense of connection, trust and belonging, influence and control amongst participants from the local community.	Feel belonging to neighbourhood
Local communities have improved knowledge of, and access to, local services.	Able to obtain advice locally

The outcomes targeted by the Liverpool Good Help Hub were used in a breakeven calculator to estimate the number of beneficiaries that would need to benefit for the pilot areas to breakeven in cost terms (with a range presented between the highest and lowest number of people that would need to benefit to breakeven). The analysis accounts only for outcomes for beneficiaries of the Good Help Hub. The analysis does not account for wider impacts. The breakeven analysis provides an upper and lower bound range which accounts for some of the uncertainties inherent in predicting social value improvements for these outcomes, which can be calculated without direct primary data collection (out of scope at this stage of the evaluation). The table below displays the results of this breakeven analysis for the Liverpool programme.

Outcome	Good neighbourhood	Feel belonging to neighbourhood	Talks to neighbours regularly	Able to obtain advice locally	Range
Value Per Beneficiary	£3,754	£2,313	£1,849	£888	£888-£3,754
Number of Beneficiaries to Breakeven	86	139	175	364	86-364

The breakeven analysis highlights that for the social welfare benefits of the Good Help Hub to offset its cost, between 86 and 364 residents need to realise at least one outcome in scope.^{[footnote 6]} The estimated range accounts for the difference between highest and lowest values assigned to each outcome. For example, to ‘live in a good neighbourhood’ has an associated value of £3,754. Should this outcome be realised for 86 residents, the total benefits would equal the cost of the programme. This presents the lowest number of beneficiaries required to achieve breakeven and the outcome with the highest assigned value. Likewise, to be ‘able to obtain advice locally’ has an associated value of £888. If 364 residents report having experienced welfare improvements from being able to obtain advice locally, the total benefits would equal the cost of the programme. This presents the highest number of beneficiaries required to achieve breakeven and the outcome with the lowest assigned value.

To date, the Good Help Hub has reached 550 individuals across a three-month delivery period. The estimated number of beneficiaries needed to be reached to breakeven is estimated to be between 86 and 364. It is likely that this intervention can produce social welfare benefits equal to the costs of the pilot programme. Should the pilot be delivered for a full 12-months and achieve a consistent number of visits from the community, only approximately 16.5% of individuals reached would be required to exhibit improvements in their belief ‘they are able to obtain advice locally’ for the pilot to breakeven (364 individuals in total).^{[footnote 7]} Strong Hub satisfaction data as highlighted above shows that achieving this conversation rate is highly possible.^{[footnote 8]}

While not identified as a primary outcome of the pilot, there is some evidence of emerging long-term outcomes achieved through the pilot programme via employment support provision. The economic value of three individuals finding employment through support accessed through the Hub is £48,423.^{[footnote 9]} 

Note that the application of the breakeven calculator to a full business case would require data to be collected that evidences the number of beneficiaries who experienced these outcomes, either through primary surveys (e.g. by replicating the Understanding Society or Community Life survey question on which this analysis was based in a survey on the target population) or administrative data (e.g. administrative records of the number of residents who take part in initiatives targeted at complex and at risk families based in Croxteth).^{[footnote 10]}

1. Universal Services are services provided to all individuals, children, and families. These include, but are not limited to schools and GP’s. ↩

2. Partnership for People and Place - Good Help Hub Delivery Plan (2022). ↩

3. This was the case even where central government partners (e.g. from DWP) demonstrated a strong willingness to be involved. ↩

4. Following the methodology set out in HMTs supplementary Green Book guidance for wellbeing appraisal, changes in reported life satisfaction can be used to monetise the social welfare implications of a policy. ↩

5. Baseline analysis of Understanding Society wave 12 data shows that the mean reported life satisfaction score in Liverpool had a value of 7.42 (when converted to an 11-point scale, uprated from 4.72 on a 7-point scale). This is lower than the national average of 8.20 (5.22 on a 7-point scale). ↩

6. The total cost of the Good Help Hub in Croxteth, Liverpool was £323,729, which was covered by £248,000 in direct funding and administrative costs of £75,729. ↩

7. This would assume a total number of visits from approximately 1,100 individuals. ↩

8. A conversation rate refers to the percentage of users reached that would achieve one outcome. ↩

9. This value accounts for a 40% deadweight to adjust for the chance that each of the three visitors would have found employment elsewhere regardless of their involvement with the Hub.  ↩

10. It may also be possible to assess the wellbeing impacts of the programme through primary survey collection of life satisfaction questions. However, because this requires direct evidence through primary data collection before and after (outside of the scope of this evaluation), we do not provide breakeven analysis in the main body of this report. If it were possible to evidence how an intervention led to an improvement in life satisfaction (through direct primary survey questions compared to baseline levels of life satisfaction, recall 8.00 when converted to the 11-point scale) then a 1-point improvement in life satisfaction among 45 beneficiaries would lead to a breakeven in costs. Note the analyst should take care to ensure that the measure of life satisfaction refers to an 11-point scale, following the guidance set out in the Green Book Supplementary Guidance (2021). ↩