#InnovationMatters: How trusts can deliver social value benefits to their communities
In his recent article for Action Sustainability, our Sustainability and Social Value Manager, Alastair Clay, spoke about how social value provided a unique opportunity to deliver relevant innovation where it was needed most.
Alastair expands on this idea, and provides some top tips on how trusts can approach social value requirements, in our latest blog post for #InnovationMatters.
Social value, when applied correctly by NHS organisations can be both empowering and uplifting for individuals, communities, organisations, and the environment.
NHS trusts must see themselves as “anchor organisations” within the communities they serve. As defined by The Health Foundation: “Anchor institutions are large, public sector organisations that are unlikely to relocate and have a significant stake in a geographical area”.
As social value has been a requirement in NHS tendering since April 2022, this provides contracting authorities with a unique opportunity to seek benefit locally wherever possible. For NHS trusts, a great place to start is to build a picture of where social value can have the most positive impact.
To start with, I would recommend trusts start to formulate what inequality is felt locally to build up an understanding of where social value could be targeted effectively vs. local need. To do this NHS organisations could undertake the following:
- Research if there are local priorities that already exist to reduce inequality, such as this document produced by the City of York Council which denotes a health and wellbeing strategy over the next decade.
- Review the Central Government Multiple Indices of Deprivation to build an understanding (my recommendation is to focus on File 13 to review information associated with previously organised CCGs)
- Engage within your ICS. One of the four main objectives of an ICS is to “tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access”.
- Consider what the wider determinants of health are within your local area.
Once your trust has an idea of what social value might be needed, you must then begin to develop questions to target specific commitments from suppliers that will positively impact the relevant inequalities targeted.
Just as crucial to social value questions asked, is the importance of contract managing any commitments made to test their impact over the medium to long-term.
By doing this, you can take an innovative approach to improving social value in your area. Some examples of what quality social value might look like are:
- A commitment to make the product, service or works more sustainable over the lifetime of the contract.
- Encouragement of skills / educational attainment for workers delivering a service
- A supplier committing to proactively reviewing their risk of modern slavery across their whole supply chain.
- A supplier committing to supporting a local healthcare related charity
These are just some of the innovative approaches you can take, and there are many other options that can be suggested. For more outcomes, it is recommended both suppliers and NHS contracting authorities review both PPN 06/21 – The Social Value Model and supporting NHS England Social Value Guidance.
If you’re a member trust of NOE CPC and would like to discuss this approach for your tendering, do contact me at Alastair.clay@noecpc.nhs.uk.