{"id":5561,"date":"2024-09-24T16:19:49","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T16:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/?p=5561"},"modified":"2024-09-24T16:19:49","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T16:19:49","slug":"how-icss-benefit-strategic-system-wide-approach-social-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/integratedcarejournal.com\/how-icss-benefit-strategic-system-wide-approach-social-value\/","title":{"rendered":"How ICSs can benefit from a strategic, system-wide approach to social value"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creating healthier, more resilient communities and reducing our environmental impact are essential elements in delivering a more sustainable NHS. These ambitions are reflected in the four core aims assigned to integrated care systems (ICSs), which are: to improve outcomes in population health and healthcare; tackle inequalities; enhance productivity and value for money; and, support broader social and economic development.<\/p>\n

The NHS has set an ambitious target to become net zero by 2040, while public bodies have had a legal responsibility to commit to the social, environmental and economic sustainability of their communities for many years. As a result, social value and environmental commitments are increasingly embedded in procurement and other legislative requirements. But how we translate these often-fragmented commitments into quantifiable achievements is less clear. Social value could have a major role to play in tackling our most pressing health and social care challenges, but this will require ICSs to adopt a more cohesive and proactive approach.<\/p>\n

Seizing opportunities<\/h3>\n

Social value advocates for looking much more broadly at the wider determinants of health and considering how system partners can work together to achieve more for their communities. This holistic approach encompasses social, economic and environmental areas such as education, housing, work, crime and community services, and how these connect and contribute to the overall wellbeing of an area and its population.<\/p>\n

Using population health data to inform priorities, system-wide collaboration gives health, public and voluntary sector organisations an important opportunity to develop a coordinated, strategic approach to delivering social value. This requires bringing the right mix of skills and disciplines together to identify programmes that will have the greatest impact, and mapping out the connections that need to be made for this to work. We know, for example, that poor quality housing can affect health. The health service could invest resources in treating a patient\u2019s pneumonia only to discharge them back to their draughty or damp home, which is likely to cause a return to ill health.<\/p>\n

Similarly, if a voluntary organisation runs activities to help tackle social isolation but people cannot afford the transport to get there, the initiative won\u2019t achieve its aims, despite appearing on paper to meet population needs. Sharing information and planning interventions across system partners creates opportunities to break these vicious cycles and move towards disease prevention and wellness.<\/p>\n

Agreeing priorities<\/h3>\n

Organisations will typically have specific activity, savings or outcome targets to meet, or be used to working in certain ways. This is where data can help identify common challenges and demonstrate the value of becoming more aligned. What are your staff surveys telling you about workforce priorities? What recruitment and retention pressures does your system face? Where are the gaps in your health provision? Which patients are driving demand, and which communities are you not reaching? Engaging effectively across your ICS, and with your patients and communities, will help determine priorities at system, place and organisational levels.<\/p>\n

Some initiatives may be unique to individual organisations or communities but aligning them to a broader set of strategic priorities will make it easier to evaluate overall impact and share learning. In Coventry and Warwickshire ICS, for example, the ICB is taking a system-wide approach to tackling health inequalities, drawing on partners\u2019 roles as anchor institutions to deliver social value across the region. The system is establishing a charter that aims to act as a framework, enabling each partner organisation to do what it needs to do to meet its own requirements, albeit contributing to a wider strategy to deliver a more proactive and sustainable health and care service. The charter aligns to the system\u2019s long-term planning process while giving a specific approach to delivering social value through an overarching framework.<\/p>\n

In Cheshire and Merseyside, the ICS developed a Social Value Charter<\/a> which defines what social value means to them, using a coproduction approach that enabled system partners, voluntary organisations, the private sector and citizens to contribute. The Charter sets out the principles and approach signatories sign up to, including how social value will be measured using a Social Value Outcomes Framework.<\/p>\n

Making suppliers part of the solution<\/h3>\n

Setting social value priorities helps organisations seek meaningful contributions from suppliers. To fulfil procurement requirements, bidders are commonly required to come up with social value initiatives and carbon reduction plans which tend to be silo projects that are difficult to monitor and manage. By inviting them to show how they would contribute to your existing social value priorities, your system can start to harness a collective contribution towards priority programmes which can be measured and evaluated against agreed criteria.<\/p>\n

This means working with procurement colleagues much earlier in the commissioning process and challenging established ways of working that prioritise savings and lower cost contracts. If your system has prioritised paying a real living wage, for example, contracts need to be assessed not just for efficiency but for the long-term, wider benefits that may come with using suppliers that pay their staff well.<\/p>\n

Measuring impact<\/h3>\n

Social value is not about quick wins but long-term sustainability. It requires taking a step back from continuous day-to-day pressures to consider initiatives that it may take us years to fully benefit from. This makes measurement even more important \u2013 we need to be able to see steps towards achieving sustainability goals, which in turn will lead to better, broader outcomes. NHS Arden & GEM has been working with the Social Value Portal to adapt their social value themes, outcomes and measures system (TOM system) for healthcare which incorporates five key themes:<\/p>\n