My Journey: Distance Travelled Tool

My Journey: Distance Travelled Tool measures soft skills relevant to employment, education and personal development for service users engaging with the SICAP social inclusion programme.

It will support service users and staff to work together to identify personal goals for the client and show progress over time. The tool is non-judgemental and supports the development of strengths and skills. Each journey is individual.

It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of support from programmes like SICAP; this tool will improve that process.

My Journey measures five soft skill areas:

• Literacy and numeracy confidence
• Confidence, goal setting and self-efficacy
• Communication skills
• Connection with others
• General work readiness

The tool was developed in response to a request by service providers, the Local Development Companies (LDCs), to have a means to measure change, as well as support their work with individuals. It has been statistically validated by Trinity College, Dublin making it is reliable and consistent.

The tool itself is a quick and easy questionnaire suitable for anyone aged 15 years and up, and can be used in individual and group settings. It is designed for repeat use to show what has changed after a number of months.

Over the past year the tool has been piloted in 15 LDCs and was introduced to all Local Community Development Companies and LDCs on 30th January 2020.

It will be implemented in all areas during 2020.

At present it is in paper format but in time an App will be developed. For more details see here

The My Journey: Distance Travelled Tool will bring many benefits.

Benefits for service users

• It puts the person at the centre and encourages the user to self-reflect and become more self-aware.
• It helps the service user to gain a better understanding of their strengths and areas they would like to work on.
• It encourages dialogue between service users and providers, and creates a space to acknowledge progress and reflect on any barriers preventing service users from achieving their goals.

Benefits for service providers

• It is a new tool that helps initiate conversation, assess needs, and plan steps in conjunction with the service user to address these.

Benefits for policy makers

• It gathers evidence-based data which can be used to identify gaps and help plan local service provision, and over time this can help providers to improve their services.
• It has the potential to highlight good practice and support the sharing of learning, and demonstrate programme impact.