Social Value & Health

Further guidance?

It is likely that there will also be further NHS guidance. Our initial research highlighted at least three sources of forthcoming guidance/policy likely to tackle social value in some form or another:

1) Lord Young’s report specifically recommends the setting up of a social value steering group with NHS England and the Sustainable Development Unit. (In fact, according to our research, a social value steering group already exists within the SDU, so perhaps what Lord Young intends is that there should be a new, strengthened steering group with representation from both NHS England and the SDU.)

2) It is also suggested that the new NHS England standard commissioning framework due later in 2015 will incorporate social value. Indeed, a number of health practitioners we spoke to in recent months (early 2015) indicated that they were awaiting this new framework before formulating their own social value responses.

3) Public Health England in conjunction with UCL Institute of Health Equity expects to report in the summer of 2015 on research into using social value as a mechanism for addressing health inequalities. We’ll report further on this as we are able to get more information.

There is enough out there, then, to begin to get a good understanding of how health bodies are thinking about social value. What we need to see is more of these good intentions being put into practice.

As other research and/or documentation becomes available we’ll also link to it here.

→ In the meantime, if you know of other social value statements, strategies or policies adopted by CCGs or other health bodies then please let us know.

We presented a much-digested version of the information above at a Health & Social Value event held on 21/04/15 as part of the City Drive social enterprise festival in Birmingham. You can view that presentation here.

— Additional research Serena Thomas.