SOCIAL VALUE
The Critical Care Healing Garden at Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.
principles rapidly becoming the norm, with widely reported benefits to patient recovery, wellbeing, and staff productivity. In 2023, RCHT won the Construction News Patient Experience Network National Award for its Critical Care Healing Garden. Fully funded by charitable donations, this is one of the first therapeutic gardens in the country to have medical gases directly piped into a dedicated biophilic outdoor space – enabling patients to spend as much time as they are able to experiencing the healing powers of the natural environment.
Partnerships and collaboration Collaboration with other public sector organisations, charities, and social enterprises, can help NHS hospital Trusts maximise the social value of their estate management practices. By working together, we can pool resources to engage with wider stakeholders, share expertise, and deliver more comprehensive and effective services. NHS Property Services’8
social prescribing hubs
have shown that for every £1 invested, there is a return of between £2.14 and £8.56 in social and economic value. It makes sense to share space. At the core of our emerging social
value strategy is partnership with organisations who invest in construction skills to support the local economy, and those who help reduce demand for acute health services. For example, RCHT collaborates with Cornwall Council, Falmouth and Plymouth Universities, local colleges, and a wide range of local charities and community organisations, to develop construction skills, offer opportunities for young people, and provide additional support services for patients and their families. These partnerships have enabled RCHT to offer a more holistic and integrated approach to preventative healthcare. Recently, our focus has turned towards our contractors and suppliers, and how they can help extend these opportunities and deliverables through further social value collaborations as part of the procurement cycle.
How embedding social value in estates management saves the NHS money If you’re hooked on the potential of social value, but you’re still struggling to convince others, here’s a good example. Social value activities, when targeted carefully and backed by data-informed decision- making, can lead to reductions in hospital admissions and improvements in patient recovery. For example, clinical guidance published by NICE in 20139
highlights falls
as a common and serious problem for older people. Falls often lead to admission to the Emergency Department in a hospital; around one in three adults aged over 65, and half of people over 80, will have at least one fall a year. Unaddressed fall hazards in the home are estimated to
March 2025 Health Estate Journal 55
Courtesy of the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
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