Reports Database

Peer support takes place when people with lived experience of mental distress support each other towards better wellbeing, as people of equal value and on a reciprocal basis, using their own lived experience as a tool of support. The importance of peer support at Together has been developed and become increasingly recognised since 2010. This work was led by the Service User Involvement Directorate in the first instance and is now strongly supported across departments and delivered within a range of operational services

There has been a rapid increase in the employment of Peer Support Co-ordinators to develop, co-ordinate and manage the provision of peer support within the past twelve months. This includes supporting teams of Peer Supporters, who are volunteers with lived experience of mental distress, to draw upon their lived experience to support people who use our services. This directly supports our strategic goal to ensure that peer support is available to service users across all our services by 2018-19. By March 2016 an average of 218 service users were receiving peer support per month across 26 Together services.

The Salford Men’s Wellbeing Project ran from August 2013 to July 2015 and was aimed at improving children’s wellbeing through improving the wellbeing of their fathers. Unlimited Potential initiated the project as an asset based community development project, applying four steps of an approach to action enquiry called Positive Deviance. The project was based in a deprived ward of Salford called Little Hulton.

The fathers that the project involved include many who have a background of severe and multiple disadvantage. Importantly a small number of more recently disadvantaged fathers, facing redundancy and other challenging life events, participated in the project. Furthermore a significant number of fathers motivated by helping others supported the Project.

Unlimited Potential recruited a local father as an Engagement Worker; this dad was seen as a peer by the core group of fathers that the project reached. They also established a Council of Dadz, made up of local fathers, who progressively took responsibility for the project. Using four steps of Positive Deviance, known locally as the “4 Ds”, the project discovered an uncommon but successful coping strategy amongst fathers experiencing serious life challenges – they shared their problems openly with other and with a spirit of helping others. The Project then designed ways to encourage this behaviour to be more widely spread, including most notably a Saturday Dadz and Kidz Club. In April 2015, three months before the end of the project, responsibility for ongoing work with fathers in Little Hulton, including continuing the activities that had been set up by the project, was transferred to a newly constituted body known as Salford Dadz – Little Hulton.

Local Area Coordination is a new approach for Thurrock with the use of coordinators based in the community. It aims to ensure vulnerable people are better supported to find local solutions that enable them to build a ‘good life’ and are less dependent on other services as a result.

This first forecast analysis for Local Area Coordination is seen as the beginning of a journey to understand and quantify the social value achieved through the service and support further evaluative work on the impact of Local Area Coordination for both the individual and other stakeholders building on the work to date. By increasing the understanding of what changes, Local Area Coordination can continue to deliver positive social outcomes, optimising this further by identifying where the greatest impact is. The development of a monitoring framework would also enable the outcomes identified in this analysis to be captured to support the ongoing evaluation and realisation of the social value forecast.

This report presents an evaluative Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis. It is based on a collaborative project between sports coach UK and StreetGames, with the primary research conducted between September 2014 and July 2016 in Tyneside, UK.

In striving to drive the development of the coaching industry, sports coach UK identified Social Return on Investment (SROI) as a method to understand the true value of developing coaches with the capability to deliver high quality coaching sessions.

The report focuses on three organisations in Tyneside that, between September 2013 and May 2015, developed a cohort of five individuals to deliver high quality coaching sessions in their local community.

This report tells the story of the SROI evaluation. It is written in accordance with the SROI principles and its transparency is intended to provide the coaching industry (and beyond) with confidence in the results.

Bairnsdale Recycling Enterprises Incorporated is a not for profit incorporated association which has established a social enterprise (trading as the Bairnsdale Tipshop) to tackle some significant social and environmental issues in its local area. It operates in Bairnsdale, a small city (population ca 13 000) situated in the eastern tip of the state of Victoria, Australia.

Like many other municipalities in Australia, Bairnsdale has a mounting problem in dealing with the waste that is created in the area. At the same time it is a region which at the time of the inception of the program had a higher unemployment rate than the average for the state. In particular, the local youth unemployment rate was, and remains, at disturbingly high levels (around 30%).

The original idea for a Tipshop was investigated by representatives of various organisations involved with the local community in 2007 following the construction of a shed at the landfill site by Sustainability Victoria (an agency of the Victorian State Government) and East Gippsland Shire Council. After negotiations with the council it was arranged to establish the shop in the building and the program commenced in 2009. After some modifications to the original concept, the Tipshop has been running in its present form since 2010 as a viable concern giving employment to previously unemployed local people. By the period of time analysed in this report (July 2013 to June 2014), the Tipshop was employing six people on a part time basis (including a business manager who was not long term employed) and generated an income of $188 000 in the year covered by the investigation.

The Tipshop has developed a model which involves taking goods that would have otherwise been put into landfill and offering them for sale in the shop set up at the landfill site. An important part of the operation, which has been crucial in its success financially, is that many of these goods have value added to them. This has been achieved by checking (testing and tagging) electrical goods to see that they are safe for resale and repairing or servicing goods such as lawn mowers and bicycles which increases their resale value significantly.

Another aspect of the program is that many of the staff employed at the shop have brought some skills to the operation which are useful to it. This has meant that the program has been more selective in choosing staff than originally anticipated. Significantly, it has meant that a minority of the employees has been drawn from the original target group of the young unemployed (those aged between 15 and 24 years old).

There is a chronic shortage of affordable housing in Victoria, particularly in Melbourne. It is estimated that over 105,000 Australians, including 23,000 Victorians, are homeless. Fortyfour percent of these homeless people are women. Some groups of women appear to be at greater risk of homelessness, including women fleeing family violence, migrants escaping conflict, women exiting the correctional system and older women with little savings.

Women’s Property Initiatives (WPI) was formed in 1996 to address the lack of affordable, appropriate, secure, long-term housing for low-income single women and single mothers. WPI works to build a secure future for disadvantaged women and their children by providing them with long-term, safe, high-quality and affordable homes. The reasons women seek housing with WPI are a complex web of individual causes, however, financial stress and family violence are common causes of housing vulnerability. The homes are made more affordable for women on low incomes, with rents set at no more than 75% of market rent or 30% of household income.

Women’s Property Initiatives commissioned a Social Return on Investment evaluation to understand the value and impact of housing on their tenants. This report provides the results of the Social Return on Investment evaluation that analyses the social value created with the provision of 66 homes to women and their families in a 12-month period over 2014-2015.

“The core purpose of this research study is the social valuation of the Post Office Network. Post Office Limited operates the largest retail network in the UK with more than 11,500 branches and delivering a wide range of products and services across post, financial and government services.

This study seeks to understand and quantify the value that people and businesses place on the Post Office network. It was commissioned by The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (“BEIS”) and delivered independently of Government and the Post Office by YouGov and London Economics.”

“Talent Match is a national test and learn programme with a focus on how we understand what works in helping young people who are unemployed. At the heart of the programme is a core belief that young people matter. We need to support them to fulfil their potential; from becoming ‘work ready’, securing employment or taking up enterprising opportunities. This progression is important. Long-term unemployment can seriously harm the future life prospects of young people, from lower earnings, further unemployment and more ill health later in life.

The programme has not been without its challenges. Numerous partnerships have told us that the young people they are dealing with are not just furthest away from the labour market, they
have multiple and complex issues and barriers which prevent them from accessing work. These needs take time to address and overcome but with the correct wrap-around support they are not insurmountable and progress can be made. A key aspect of this progression is to continue to demonstrate and share the principle findings from Social Return on Investment studies, to not only show the economic impact but more importantly the human impact these interventions can and do have.”

“The purpose of this report is to examine the extent to which Street UK is achieving its goal of creating greater financial inclusion. The report was compiled using our own client data, surveys and case studies in addition to comparing the demographics of our clients with the UK population. Our research has found that;

• Financial support is not restricted to having a solely financial impact in the borrower’s life. 79% of our surveyed clients agree that getting a loan from Street UK had more than just a financial impact. These include improvements to their level of stress, overall health, self-esteem and relationships with family and/or friends

• An individual’s previous credit history will not always be an accurate reflection of their ability to repay future loans. Over 70% of the people we lend to have a past default on their credit file, but over 90% of the loans we advance are repaid

• Many people are struggling to meet the everyday costs that those on higher incomes can take for granted. Our loans are most commonly used for home improvements, Christmas and holiday expenditure

• Short-term loans do not have to be expensive. They can be provided both online and on the high street for reasonable interest rates that cover the costs and associated risk of lending. Our online APR of 201% and our in-branch APR of 95% continue to under-cut other high-cost lenders

• Ethical lending can be sustainable if additional services are offered by finance companies. Our back office services business contribute to the Street UK Group’s overall sustainability by helping deliver scale economies and subisidising the cost of senior management, back office admnistration and our IT infrastructure

• Given these findings, it is necessary to protect those who are most vulnerable in society and to provide low income households with access to affordable finance without the risk of them falling into unmanageable volumes of debt”

“This report – produced under the auspices of Pro Bono Economics for the national employment charity Tomorrow’s People – evaluates the socio-economic benefits of the Working-It-Out (WIO) programme. Since its introduction in 2007, the WIO programme has helped more than 2,000 socially-disadvantaged young people aged 16-18 find employment or develop new skills through training and education. Our analysis, which updates an earlier study by FTI Consulting, finds that each £1 invested in the WIO programme between 2007 and 2014 has on average delivered economic benefits worth £3.80. This estimate is subject to some uncertainty, but nonetheless presents a strongly positive picture of the WIO programme’s contribution to the lives of the young people that participate in it as well as British society more broadly.

Relative to the FTI study, we use additional data for the period 2012-2014 and also make a handful of methodological adjustments intended to deliver more robust results. These adjustments change both the level and the composition of the economic benefits delivered by the WIO programme, with the result that we estimate a higher benefit-cost ratio than FTI. We also find that the BCR has increased in latter part of our sample period, driven in the main by a significant expansion of the WIO programme – with no dilution in its effectiveness – while costs have been controlled. This is clearly an encouraging finding that suggests the WIO programme continues to develop and respond to changes in the economic environment. Nonetheless, we recommend that, going forward, TP should collect more granular data on the socio-economic characteristics of participants in the WIO programme in order to help identify more accurately the underlying drivers of the estimated BCR and how it evolves over time. It will also be beneficial to collect longitudinal data on the post-programme earnings of WIO participants, as well as their ongoing participation in the labour market, especially as the new national living wage is introduced.

As with all analyses of its kind, our study relies on a number of methodological simplifications and assumptions. The specific way in which the model is calibrated can have a significant impact on the final results, so our estimates should be treated with a degree of caution, especially when considered in an absolute sense. We have more confidence in our analysis of how the BCR has evolved over time, but even in this context small methodological adjustments can have a large impact. Future work could usefully aim to limit the sensitivity of the results to the underlying assumptions, although we recognise that there are practical constraints on what can be achieved while retaining analytical tractability. These methodological limitations should not, however, detract from the headline message that the WIO programme offers genuine economic benefits.”

“This report provides an outline of the Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis conducted to evaluate Getting Out To Work (GOTW), funded by The Big Lottery Reaching Communities Fund and managed and operated by Tomorrow’s People. Interviews with key stakeholders have informed the analysis that employs the principles of the SROI framework to understand what has changed in the lives of GOTW’s clients and monetise these important changes.

In line with the mission of the national charity, the overriding intention of GOTW is to provide intensive employment support to men and women after a time in prison, or serving their sentence in the community, or those people who are at risk of offending behaviour.

However, it is recognised that many people in these situations require additional support in their quest for work. For that reason, one-to-one support relationships built around an individual action plan that offers support in the way that individuals require it – be that vocational training, help accessing funding opportunities, practical advice, communication with employers or on-going contact and support including In-Work Support – provides clients with improved likelihood of finding and securing sustainable employment over the long term.

Comparing the overall value of outcomes to the relative investments cost required to create the benefits reveals a social return on investment of £4.16: 1. This indicates that for each £1 of investment, £4.16 of social impact is created.

Whilst the result of the analysis is positive, this report also importantly identifies where significant improvements are possible in the capture and management of social impact information. GOTW clearly positively impacts on the lives of those it works with, but without more understanding it is impossible to appreciate how important different changes are, how to manage these, and what the overall value is.”

“This report provides an outline of the Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis conducted to evaluate Knowsley Positive Progress (KPP), funded by the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities Fund and managed and operated by Tomorrow’s People. Interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders have informed the analysis that employs the principles of the SROI framework to understand what has changed in the lives of KPP’s clients and monetise these important changes.

KPP provides support to the people of Knowsley with experience of health issues (including mental health), or other barriers to employment, training, education or volunteering. The analysis has measured and valued these important outcomes, but has also identified significant behavioural outcomes that have also contributed to considerable social value being created.

Comparing the overall value of aggregated outcomes to the relative cost of the investments required to create the benefits reveals a social return on investment of £7.51: 1. This indicates that for each £1 of investment, £7.51 of social impact is created.”

“This study focuses on the social value1 created by Turner Contemporary. The research and analysis was undertaken by the COaST research group at Canterbury Christ Church University on behalf of Turner Contemporary. The methods used are based upon SROI (Social Return on Investment) principles, and set out to measure social value created relative to the value of the resources invested. Data was collected using a range of methods including interviews with key personnel and outside stakeholders, focus groups, workshops, observation, surveys and desk research.

The report analyses and calculates the social value created by Turner Contemporary during the gallery’s April 2015–March 2016 financial year. The report is intended to be used in the gallery’s strategic planning by helping the organisation understand where its activities achieve the most social value in relation to its investments, and to manage future return in its business planning. It will also be used as an advocacy document to report to stakeholders, and to support applications for sponsorship, resources and funding.

This report contains technical terms that may have specific meanings in the context of this study. Definitions can be found in the glossary at the back of the report.”

“Chototel was conceived out of a need to provide good quality, dignified housing solutions in a market that fails to cater to those at the bottom of the pyramid. Soaring rentals and housing prices are fuelling housing poverty resulting in vacant residential projects and a greater number of people living in substandard housing. There is clearly a mismatch in the supply and demand of housing, particularly with regard to the demands of the urban poor. There is a gap in the market that, if filled successfully, has the potential for phenomenal social impact.

Chototel, formed from the words “chotu” (meaning small) and hotel, is rolling out an exciting project building ‘super-budget hotels’, where tariffs start from US$2/day with uninterrupted utilities, clean water and social infrastructure such as crèches, community kitchens and open, green spaces.

Access to decent affordable shelter is so fundamental to the health and well-being of people and the smooth functioning of economies that it is embedded in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, in developing and advanced economies alike, cities struggle with the challenge of accommodating their poorest citizens. There is a phenomenal migration of the rural poor to cities, such that they now constitute the majority of the urban population in developing countries; yet their living conditions represent a tragic failure on the part of urban planners.”

Safaricom aspires to use its mobile telecommunications products and services to improve the quality of life and contribute to sustainable livelihoods for people throughout Kenya.

The company wanted to understand how successful it has been in achieving this goal and how it can increase the value it creates for society in Kenya still further.

In order to do so, the company chose to partner with finance and sustainability professionals from KPMG in South Africa and Kenya to apply KPMG’s True Value methodology.

The methodology “monetizes” the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of an organization and its products and services, i.e. it quantifies them in financial terms.

“The contribution of US companies in Ireland goes far beyond the economic impact. US companies are also responsible for significant social transformation in their local communities and nationally by providing innovative and inclusive social impact programmes. Helping to build a fairer and more inclusive Ireland, with equality of opportunity for all, is a core value for our members and our Chamber. This Report shows how our member companies and their people bear witness to this core value. It forms an important part of our wider campaign to highlight the positive impact on society our members and their teams make.”