Another Outlook on Outcomes - Part Four

NOTE: This is Part Four of a continuing entry. See Monday 4/9, Tuesday 4/10, and Wednesday 4/11 for Part’s One, Two, and Three.

One of the things that really caught my attention was the following:

I put the bit about failing in bold, because that might be the most relevant factor to my ascendancy from the streets. I spent about two years failing. Two years of draining the income of Portland homeless youth serving organizations without producing any measurable outcome. A cost/benefit analysis would have clearly indicated that I was a poor investment. No matter how many times I failed, or how spectacularly, I was never written off as a lost cause.

This is not the first time I’ve had similar perspectives pointed out to me. While it is rare to receive feedback from youth 10 or more years down the road, it is not unheard of. I know this is anecdotal at best, but when I hear from a youth who is doing well many years later and giving credit to the programs that existed for them, they are almost without exception the young people who did little more than fail and screw up while they were in the program. This was particularly true with our Transitional Living Program, Bridge House. Even in the short run, a year or so after exiting the program, our most successful residents were generally the residents who weren’t successful while they were there -- often having been in the program more than once and “failing” both times.

I’m not sure, however, if failure within a program necessarily precipitates long term success. I have had enough contact with other programs around the nation to see that program failure often can be the beginning (or continuation) of a downward spiral. The difference may be in the program’s attitude toward failure.

At Bridge House, both failure and success were normalized aspects of the transition process. Failing was not a problem, as long as the young person learned from the failure and kept trying. The program would neither penalize them for failure, nor protect them from the consequences of failure. We simply offered them mentorship and guidance as they went through whatever process they needed to go through. This is a different philosophy from other programs where failure is to be avoided. Emphasis is placed on success, and young people who are not succeeding are a “problem”. Could this be the difference between failure leading to success and failure leading to more failure? I don’t know, but it may be worth exploring.

Programmatically, however, the concern is obvious. Let’s say for a moment that it is true that experiencing failure while in a program is a key to long term success. What that means is that when outcome measurements are taken during program services or upon completion, it’s going to look like the program is failing. To quote from the email “A cost/benefit analysis would have clearly indicated that I was a poor investment.” Yes it would have, but he obviously was not a poor investment, he was just an investment that didn’t pay off right away. I identified this problem in the Operations Manual I wrote for Bridge House when I said “If you have a program that allows young people to grow and learn from their mistakes, it means that you have a program where young people are screwing up all the time.” It may be that this is a necessary prerequisite to long term success, but it doesn’t give you much to hang your hat on when funding sources ask you about your 90 and 180 day outcomes.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this series with one more observation on his outcome perspectives.