NHS North West

The North West Social Value Foundation will ensure that NHS organisations in the North West of England actively Innovate, Inspire and Invest to improve the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of local communities in everything they do.

What is social value?

Social Value is the benefit to the community from the commissioning and procurement over and above the direct purchase of goods and services. Health has an active role to play in promoting and developing the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of local communities.

Social Value is created when resources, inputs, processes or policies are combined to generate improvements in the lives of patients, public, communities or society as a whole. Social Value is about how well scarce resources are allocated and used, identifying how their collective use delivers measurable and improved outcomes to patients, carers, the public and our communities.

Health is a major economic player in market and has a responsibility to ensure that health commissioners and providers are able to show and demonstrate added value in areas such as the environment, employment, educations, housing and the wider economy to our communities.

NHS North West has been commissioned by the Department of Health to lead a project on behalf of the 10 strategic health authorities of England. The Pan-regional Social Value Commissioning project has developed a suite of tools and techniques that providers and commissioners across health, social care and 3rd sector organisations can use in supporting local communities.

Following the success of the pan-regional project the North West has now launched the North West Social Value Foundation.