COMMENT
In praise of social enterprise
Social enterprises have a unique ability to involve communities in service delivery and respond to local needs, says Lord Victor Adebowale
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Lord Victor Adebowale is chief executive of Turning Point, a social enterprise providing services for people with complex needs, including those affected by drug and alcohol misuse, unemployment, mental health problems and those with a learning disability.
was pleased to hear in the Queen’s Speech that the role of social enterprises, charities and cooperatives in our public services will be enhanced.
In particular, I support the notion of increasing social enterprise provision within the NHS. Social enterprises are especially well-placed to deliver such services, as they secure a triple bottom line on financial, social and environmental performance targets.
Social enterprises possess the same business acumen as commercial providers but still attract the same high quality clinical staff as the NHS. The fact that they plough any profit they make back into helping those who use their services also means they are often more trusted than many private sector providers.
In addition, they are innovative and outcome focused in a time when driving efficiencies within the NHS is becoming increasingly important. It is great that this ability to deliver more for less is being recognised and I hope this is just the beginning.
Many people from harder to reach groups fail to access statutory services for fear that they will be judged. However, encouraging such groups to use NHS services and especially those with the most complex needs is vital and will save money in the long term.
Commissioning non-statutory providers who are often more trusted, and more specifically social enterprises and charities, is one solution to this issue and is likely to encourage increased access. This would go some way
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to reversing the inverse care law which dictates that those who are most in need of care have the least access to it.
My experience through Turning Point’s Connected Care model shows that we can recruit local people as community researchers, involving them in the design and delivery of bespoke services and working with local commissioners to integrate health and social care. It’s a model that works well and ensures commissioning decisions are taken based on the needs of the community and are not merely a result of outside professional control and purchasing.
Some of the biggest problems in primary and community care come from silo ways of working where no one talks to each other. Budgets are kept separate and services are designed around the needs of the organisations providing them, not the people who use them.
The new government is interested in doing things differently and more efficiently and one way this can be done is through integration. Social enterprises have a wealth of experience in integrating service provision in order to meet the whole needs of an individual rather than one need at a time and it makes sense to tap into this expertise.
Of course, social enterprises come in all shapes and sizes. My own organisation, Turning Point, is a large social enterprise, yet its roots were as a small charitable organisation working in south London. I therefore truly understand the importance of all shapes and sizes of social entrepreneurial activity
whether this comes in the form of small community run social enterprises or larger institutions such as The Big Issue.
Within the NHS, staff are now able to set up their own social enterprises in order to run frontline services. Indeed, this is already happening in some parts of the country. For example, in June around 1,200 community staff were transferred from NHS Hull to a social enterprise called City Health Care Partnership. Staff will be shareholders in the new organisation.
I have always supported the idea of extending The Right to Request and have had several mentoring meetings with the Bexley Step Up, Step Down unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital, which has been given support to form as an independent enterprise. I am optimistic that the coalition government will go further still in supporting such extension of social enterprise.
I am hopeful that the NHS embraces the potential of social enterprises to deliver more quality primary and community care services. After all, social enterprise coincides with ideals such as localism and finding solutions in communities. Social enterprises are also similar to the NHS, in that they plough any surpluses back into delivering better services, offering true value for money.
NHS managers must be aware that if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting what we’ve always got and we cannot afford to do that. Social enterprises present us with a once in a life time chance to change the future, save money and deliver an NHS that the public demands and deserves.
Jul/Aug 10
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