Social Value Toolkit

Co-production is not only a term for a mechanism for multipurpose, multistakeholder networks but is considered an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilisation of community-based groups.

Commissioners must be open to considering a range of options, procurement is one option; social value can be achieved via different vehicles involving many different types of suppliers, including social enterprises and voluntary and community organisations often referred to as Social Capital.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines social capital as “networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups” (OECD, 2001).

Social Capital has been conceptualised and measured:

• personal relationships
• social network support
• civic engagement; and
• trust and cooperative norms

Development of relationships and trust has enabled collaborative procurement arrangements to deal more effectively with complex policy areas.

In relation to issues such as the environment or quality of life for disadvantaged groups, network relationships have provided an opportunity for interested stakeholders to work closer together and set out common and clear objectives to address community problems.

For example, collaborative supply relations have facilitated close engagement between the Department of Environment, registered charities, and local schools and communities in the implementation of local environmental projects. Under this arrangement, partnership stakeholders collaborate to share information, set up performance measures, report on the progress of environmental projects, and disseminate good practice in an effort to improve the environment in local communities.

Research theory suggests that Social Capital can:

• Create high levels of trust and reduce the need for costly monitoring, transaction costs
• Social capital can improve access to resources among network members
• Provide an efficient distribution process for network members that reduces the amount of time and investment required to gather information
• Create identity resources which build a sense of ‘belonging’ and shared action and shift perceptions of network members from an individual basis towards a greater willingness to work with other organisations and individuals
• Have positive ripple effects within society by encouraging participation and creating greater social cohesion

Examples of Social Capital resources being mobilised using co-production as an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilisation to achieve social value are set out below:

Full user

Professional co-production where professionals such as commissioners and procurers share the task of planning and designing the service and also deliver it. e.g.

• Community Trusts
• Community based housing associations and tenant run co-operatives
• Faith based social services where professionals delivering the service are managed by the community
• Rural environmental improvement schemes delivered by local communities and advised by professionals
• Neighbourhood watch schemes where local residents work with the Local Authority /Police

User: Community co-delivery of services with professionals, without formal planning or design processes

Community groups undertake activity but call on professional expertise. e.g.

• Community resource centres
• Local associations (leisure activities, music, sports, etc.)

Traditional: Professional service provision with user – community consultation on service planning and design issues. e.g.

• Planning for real exercises involving communities in interactive simulations to suggest change to services and priorities
• User consultation committees - users give feedback/influence proposals for change
• Parent governors of schools with power over strategic direction
• Participatory budgeting exercises - community members can influence the annual budget preparation
• ‘Community Chest’ or distributed commissioning the public sector purchaser enables many smaller commissioning bodies to choose the public services to be provided

User co-delivery of professionally designed services: e.g.

• Expert by experience - current or ex-users of the service
• Health-promoting to empower the community for health-promoting lifestyle changes and management of chronic illness
• Volunteers (including families, neighbours, and friends) in care services who supplement the resources of professional staff
• Direct payments to users in care services, who purchase professional care

User – community sole delivery of professionally planned services

Community members take responsibility for delivering services planned by professionals: e.g.

• Projects which host families live with and look after people with disabilities and deliver home-care services
• Smart houses in which technological aids allow residents to carry out many functions for which they would otherwise need skilled support or home care
• Samaritans (volunteers) trained to deliver professionally designed counselling services on an anonymous basis to potential suicides
• Community-based recycling programs
• Community credit unions
• Youth sports leagues run by volunteers according to nationally formulated codes

User/community sole delivery of co-planned or co-designed services: e.g.

• Rural multifunction service points staff led by volunteers
• Youth courts first offenders sentenced to work by juries of other young people
• Contract services undertaken by local community groups that are under contract to public services (i.e., maintenance of housing estates or cleaning of community centres)

Traditional self-organised

Community provision or ‘parallel production’ does not explicitly involve public sector professionals. Nevertheless, professionals often have at least an indirect role (e.g., advice, informal quality checks). e.g.

• children’s playgroups
• school breakfast clubs
• food cooperatives
• Local Enterprise Trading Schemes, and
• local festivals

Importantly, these initiatives qualify as co-production between service providers and users, even though the providers are nonprofessional and can mobilise community resources very successfully and achieve social value.