Monitoring and Evaluation

The Maya Centre has a strong commitment to monitoring and evaluation, helping us to provide a high quality, continuously improving service to the women who need us most.

We are proud to be a Learning Organisation, which means that we work together with our service-users, staff, trustees and stakeholders to share information, ideas and insights which support our delivery and challenge our thinking.

MEASURING ORGANISATIONAL OUTCOMES

In keeping with our holistic approach to women’s mental health and wellbeing, we work to five key organisational outcomes:

Recovery: reduced impact of trauma, greater ability to enjoy life and plan for the future.
Resilience: reduced isolation; increased sense of wellbeing and self-esteem.
Prevention: reduced risk to self and likelihood of abusive relationships.
Wider community: improved social and support networks, including personal relationships.

Our outcomes inform all of our work, ensuring that we champion the rights of all women to good mental health. We measure these outcomes using client feedback forms, regular polls and surveys and within discussions at our staff and Board meetings. Our findings influence our strategic direction, what services we offer and how we deliver them.

MEASURING CLINICAL OUTCOMES

We work with isolated and minoritised women who experience high levels of trauma and intersecting barriers to good mental health.

Our counsellors are qualified and experienced in specialist trauma work and violence against women and girls (VAWG), and our clinical services are accredited by the BACP and bound by the BACP ethical framework.

We measure our clinical outcomes using the nationally recognised Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE), via a secure online database (CoreNet).

This system enables us to track therapeutic outcomes, using our findings to develop and deliver the best possible services to clients. It also allows for accurate reporting to funders, and for comparison with many NHS and third sector psychological therapies services.

Clients are given CORE questionnaires to complete at different stages: pre counselling, mid counselling and at the end of their counselling. Scores are taken from the questions answered and are calculated within four areas:

Emotional wellbeing
Problems
Functioning
Risk to self and others

Counsellors also complete a CORE Therapy assessment form as part of the assessment process and a CORE end of therapy assessment form.

LATEST FINDINGS 2020/21

During the period April 2020-March 2021, 70% of women we supported disclosed experiences of domestic abuse or violence; 20% disclosed childhood sexual abuse; and 28% disclosed experiences of sexual abuse including rape. As reported in the media, we saw increased disclosure of violence against women (VAWG) including domestic abuse, sexual violence and assault, with women telling us that they felt more trapped and at higher risk as a result of the pandemic. All women referred to our services reported experiencing increased isolation, depression, stress or anxiety as a result of Covid-19 with some women returning to our services to due resurgence of historical trauma symptoms.

Our findings indicate that despite the Covid-19 pandemic and series of lock-downs, over 80% of women referred to us during this time engaged well with our remote online/ telephone service, with fewer cancellations or unplanned endings. Some women reported that although they preferred face-to-face sessions, they had more time and fewer distractions, meaning that they took their sessions seriously and experienced faster recovery. For others, online support made all the difference as it removed the exposure of having to visit an unknown building and led to greater disinhibition in disclosing experiences of trauma and abuse. Click here to read our report on remote and online therapies at The Maya Centre.

Our CoreNet database revealed the following statistics for this period for our 1-1 Counselling service:

97% of women showed a greater willingness to disclose experiences of trauma.
71% of women showed an improvement in personal insight.
77% of women showed an improvement in their coping strategies.
81% of women showed an improvement in their subjective well- being.
74% of women showed an improvement in day-to-day functioning.
63% of women showed an improvement in their decision-making.
94% of women showed an improvement in personal relationships.

This shows our counselling service to be highly effective: women scored higher on expressing feelings, subjective wellbeing and personal relationships than in previous years. Where scores were lower – in relation to coping strategies or decision-making – we see the impact of Covid-19 and increased isolation on women’s external or social functioning.

RESEARCH

Researching inclusive women’s mental health is central to our work at The Maya Centre, helping us to establish a sound theoretical framework; analyse our approach and what makes us effective; and explore what more we can do from a service-user perspective.

Alongside our own internal evaluation, we occasionally work with external agencies or universities which bring research expertise and allow for a more in-depth anaylsis and report.

Our latest external evaluation took place with UCL in 2017/18 – please click here to read more.