How does Social Value fit into the wider policy agenda?

The wider policy perspective

The use of social value concepts is becoming ever more important during this challenging time for the public sector, which is simultaneously committed to reducing costs and creating transformational change in the way in which it delivers the shared social, health, economic and environmental aspirations of the communities it serves.

In order to do this effectively, the public sector will increasingly need to consider how additional benefits can be levered from all its investment in ‘places’- particularly in ways that increase social justice, embed social protection and strengthen community cohesion.

This will require more sophisticated technical assessments of investment shifts required, but also an analysis of the socio-cultural determinants of the change needed – within professional cultures, within service delivery systems and within communities themselves.

There are a number of increasingly powerful drivers shaping the planning and delivery of public sector outcomes at this time and the understanding of these will need to take a more central role in defining the way in which system resources are mobilised in future.

These include the need to:

1. Reduce inequalities by developing healthy, economically active and socially supportive environments or ‘places’ which ‘release’ communities’ own assets and resilience, building on the recommendations of the Marmot Review of the Social Determinants of Health in England;
2. Develop whole system delivery platforms for integrated public service delivery which will both reduce costs and increase efficiency;
3. Develop services that both seek to co-produce outcomes with consumers as equal partners and that liberate the caring and advocacy capacity of each public sector professional to drive change for improvement;
4. Target and personalise services more effectively using insight research and social marketing methodology;
5. Increase the ‘social value’ of public sector investment in each ‘place’ through more effective and socially-just use of the large proportion of GDP which is public sector spend;
6. Move from a ‘detect and manage’ model of needs assessment and service delivery to a more integrated and intelligence based ‘predict and prevent’ approach - capable of modelling the investment required across whole public sector systems to prevent the need for social welfare system dependency and realise the shared improvement benefits for all;
7. Link to existing regional health strategy development (such as the WHO modelled Investment for Health);
8. Link to the emerging Single Regional Strategy aspirations developing in each region which will form the framework of larger regional infrastructure spend (such as housing and transport) and provide guidance for spatial planning through the Local Development Frameworks.

Value for Money & Efficiency

Value for money is concerned not just with unit costs, but with what has been called the full value or public benefit that a provider brings to delivering a service. This recognises that every time the public sector spends money, it should do so in a way that achieves as many of its objectives as possible. That is, it is concerned with the value a provider creates across a range of outcomes over the longer term with the resources it is given. The draft NHS Constitution states that PCTs ‘will use (their) resources for the benefit of the whole community’. This is where social value concepts have a vital role to play.

Different Models of Provision

This project also links to the Cabinet Office’s Office of the Third Sector work to develop a standardised approach, within the third sector, for demonstrating the social return on investment (SROI) by commissioners. This work will support social investors and commissioners of public services to make more intelligent investment or purchasing decisions and enable third sector organisations to demonstrate the wider social value impacts of their work.

The Transforming Community Services agenda provides a framework for the development of new and innovative provider services structures which ‘need to be sustainable and flexible – capable of evolving to meet an increasingly challenging environment of rising patient expectations, more demanding PCT and practice-based commissioners (wanting higher service quality, more effective targeting of resources to need, and better value), and increasing patient choice’. Being able to articulate to commissioners, the wider value of their activities is key for this new generation of provider services.

Improving Quality & Releasing Innovation

By freeing up providers of health and social care services to demonstrate the wider value that they can bring to the provision of services, space can be created for innovation by encouraging new entrants and empowering staff to improve patient care and focus on quality. This directly relates to the recent High Quality Care for All publication.

Opening up the market for the provision of health and social care services offers all provider organisations exciting opportunities to use their talents, enthusiasm and skills to take more control in delivering services responsive to the needs of the communities and people they serve. Through innovation and redesigning services in flexible new ways, service providers can exert their influence to improve outcomes.

Social Value addresses all parts of the QIPP agenda:

• Quality – Social value enables the total picture to be considered and wider impacts to be accounted for
• Innovation –the Key to social value is releasing innovation and motivating other sectors to make health innovations
• Productivity – Social value may produce a better platform for partnership working and complementary contribution (or exchange) to the wider agendas
• Prevention – Social value makes explicit the contributions and interventions needed to redress the determinants of health

Impacting the wider Determinants of Health

The use of a social value framework has the potential for not only the NHS to demonstrate its impact across other areas of public sector (eg: environment, employment, etc) but also for other areas of the public, private and third sectors to demonstrate the contribution they make to improving health. Once the system begins to think and behave in this way, it becomes possible for this wider value to be managed and co-ordinated to best effect.

Contact Details:

Brett Nelson
mobile: 07827 804 156
office: 0161 830 2139
brett.nelson@cpcltd.com

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