One Wirral CIC have successfully achieved Level 1 of the Social Value Management Certificate! To understand more about their organisation and why they chose to embrace the Principles of Social Value, we spoke to Katie Landon, Communications and Marketing Officer.
Please tell us about your organisation and what you do
We collaborate across sectors and organisations finding areas that need extra assistance to reduce health inequalities – helping to bridge gaps in health services and support. Using an agile approach means we can help people through practical and innovative solutions that really make a difference.
Some of our projects and services include; cancer prehabilitation, diabetes prehabilitation, Community Health Checks, collaborating with Macmillan to deliver an innovative Personalised Care offering, providing various training, consultancy and research services as well as creating strategic partnerships.
By using real data and evidence, talking to the community, and committing to our values, we aim to empower people to make the most of their health.
We are committed to measuring and managing the social value our organisation is creating, which is why we became a Social Value UK Organisational Member. It allows us to understand the impact of decisions and understand the changes on people’s lives beyond measuring finances.
Has your organisation been measuring and valuing social value for a long time, or are you at the start of your journey?
We have always had an appreciation for social value, but have formally started to measure it over the last 12-18 months in order to understand our impact, report on it, and find areas of improvement. We started with one project, then two, and this year plan to roll out across all.
It’s good to see that evidencing social value is being requested more and more amongst tender application processes, because it means even a greater number of organisations are required to showcase and evaluate their impact on their communities.
What prompted your organisation to apply for the Social Value Management Certificate?
Our directors were accredited as Level 1 Associate Practitioners, and we saw this an opportunity to celebrate the work we had done to date, highlight to partners and collaborators the importance of social value, and how it can contribute to long-term goals and missions.
Having the organisational certificate clearly demonstrates our commitment to social value, so our stakeholders can have confidence in our approach.
What are you putting in place to improve how social value data is collected and acted upon to create social value?
Our directors and wider team have implemented a robust policy that means we’re always thinking of the big picture, which includes ensuring our projects and services can provide as much social value as possible. It allows us to be as accountable as possible with our outcomes, develop our internal capacity and utilise the social value hub.
For example, with our Cancer Prehabilitation service, we regularly report the social return on investment to update to update our stakeholders and provide continuous transparency with how the service is contributing in multiple ways.
What has your organisation learned in achieving the Social Value Management Certificate?
During the discussions of looking at our processes and policies, it highlighted the ways we collected information could have been improved.
Measuring and monitoring social value also makes us and our stakeholders appreciate how our projects and services are having positive impacts in ways that we may have previously not thought about, meaning we gain a lot more insight and evidence to put forward and inform various organisations or bodies, which can help also them discuss solutions and opportunities.
Therefore, it can support our wider collaborative efforts even further.
How do you see your organisation benefiting from achieving Level 1 of the Social Value Management Certificate?
As well as implementing the processes in order to better collect the social value, we can use it to inform our future initiatives and make our strategic partners also aware of the benefits.
We will also be utilising the accreditation within tender applications to highlight that we are committed to not only monitoring social value, but also maximising it.
What initiatives will you be working on to create social value for your stakeholders?
We’ll continue to embed measurement across all our projects and services over the next 12 months, including encouraging our partners and collaborators to do the same as it has far-reaching benefits to our communities.
