MEAL SROI Summary Background MEAL is a social enterprise and registered museum which encourages people to be active and learning, look at the world differently, make friends and give something back. It explores rural life with its buildings, collections and animals and works the land too. Work-based learning (WBL) is its flagship programme for long term unemployed people, many of whom have learning or mental health difficulties.
Scope The SROI analysis was intended to raise the profile of MEAL’s social impact and provide practical information on pitching the WBL service. It intended to analyse a year of provision, 2009-10, but because our information was limited for these cohorts, we worked with participants who were still in touch from across the years. This enabled us to set up an informed SROI model, but in the future we will collect baseline and tracking information for all participants so analysis is specific for each cohort. We have four material stakeholder groups: participants; their families (including in residential homes); the state and community; and museum staff and volunteers.
Our story of change Social Return On Investment (SROI) works with stakeholders to identify the story of what changes as a result of what we do. Participants and families invest enormous energy in attending the programme, and we think more can be done next time in making the most of participant and family inputs. Partners also invest money and time, but for clarity we counted only the MEAL inputs here and accounted for other investment by
attributing some of the results to others and so claiming less for MEAL. The investment in the programme enables MEAL to deliver work-based learning, informal tuition in practical heritage skills and accredited training at the museum. The participants identified four outcomes: progression towards the world of work; more confidence and hope for the future; improved relationships and greater happiness. Through conversations with the SROI community we have not valued the last as an independent outcome, though we’d like to see more work done in this area in line with recent work on national accounts of well-being, for example. Participants indicated strongly that the museum itself (collections, heritage, place) was a critical element in their success. Families also see improvements in family relationships and the state and community see savings in welfare payments and more efficient and effective local service delivery. Museum staff and volunteers increase their understanding of disadvantaged people. The key question remains for us:
How to understand, value and encourage happiness and emotional investment?
Our evidence In asking participants for indicators of what would change in achieving these outcomes, we pieced together ladders of progression, some of which are not made up of equal steps. For example, in moving towards the world of work, actually getting a job is a giant leap forward, though other steps have value too. On the other hand, the savings the state makes in welfare payments are not seen until participants begin to pay back in
taxes. At first in fact, the outcome is negative as participants become more active and take up more services and opportunities. The ladders of progression we used are based on the four stages of learning model, from a state where ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, through engaging and learning to improvements, and finally a state in which these changes become the norm. For example, in building confidence the steps are 1 Not thinking of the future; 2 Willing to engage; 3 Participating, trying new things, taking care with appearance; 4 Having areas of responsibility, looking after accommodation/money, having goals and expectations; 5 Goals are continually renewing. Key learning from our evidence was the importance of moving participants on at certain stages of their journey: We gathered evidence in the form of self assessments against the ladders of progression which we checked against plans and assessments, and what we saw happen for participants. Thirty seven completed or left for jobs in our year of analysis. Participants’ results showed that the greatest change was seen in progression towards work, slightly less for increased confidence and less again for developing relationships with 90%, 70% and 50% of participants seeing changes. The average ‘progression’ (movement on the ladder) is 38%, 35% and 30% respectively, around three out of five steps, including zero results for those who didn’t experience the outcome. This reflects the primary purpose of the programme. Three sub-groups of participants: those previously volunteering, those Mencap referred and ‘others’ saw slightly different affects. Seven out of ten families responded, and five of them saw improved relationships with a score of half of the maximum. We estimated 48 family members affected.
Welfare savings were on average £3K but results were very diverse, presenting good opportunities for improvements. Local efficiency and effectiveness was rated high, but the level of impact was small, again offering scope for growth. We estimated impact on four local organisations. Finally museum staff and volunteers saw improvements in confidence, but were evenly split in judging the experience positive or negative. 10 people are influenced.
Establishing our impact Some of these changes might have happened anyway (deadweight) and some might be down in part to others (attribution) so we cannot claim all the credit for these results. For participants, history indicates that these outcomes would not have happened without our intervention and the same is implied for for state outcomes, which result directly from those of participants. So we have not taken off an amount for deadweight. Participants did attribute part of the affect to others though in their interviews. We judged family situations may have improved anyway and the same is true for museum staff and volunteers and an amount is taken off here. Participants indicated that MEAL’s influence was strongest in them progressing towards work, less for increasing confidence and least for improved relationships. Other stakeholder outcomes follow this pattern so we only attributed a percentage of the impact to MEAL for all outcomes except two: Partners felt improved local delivery was entirely down to MEAL and staff confidence was also attributed to MEAL, as we know staff had no other similar experiences to contribute to the outcome.
In some instances, a positive outcome for us might mean a negative effect on someone else or simply that the problem was no longer on our patch. So we need to check for and take off any displacement. Almost all our outcomes have no negative impact on others. The only area of displacement is when our participants get jobs that may have gone to others. This reduces the benefits to state and community. Because SROI captures social and environmental, as well as economic benefit – things that are not necessarily bought and sold and have no price as such - we use financial proxies to represent the value created. This enables us to quantify the results and gives us a common unit of measurement to compare the return with our investment. The results are the distance travelled multiplied by the number affected and then adjusted by taking off what we can’t take credit for. The proxy value is for a full outcome, only part of which is claimed using the results above. The table summarises the results and the financial proxies for each outcome.
Outcome
Adjusted results
Proxy value1
Progression towards the world of work
38% x 37 = 14, adjusted to 9 after attribution
Increased yearly income from having a job over benefits £8,340
Increased confidence and hope for the future
35% x 37 = 13, adjusted to 7 after attribution
Value of counselling £649, + value of work experience £1,139
Development of positive relationships
30% of 37 = 11, adjusted to 5 after attribution
Cost of social life £1,359 + family counselling £333
Better family life
54% of 48 = 26, adjusted to 4 after deadweight and attribution
Cost of family counselling £333 + part cost of bringing up a child £4,805
Welfare payment savings
37 results, adjusted to 20 after attribution and displacement
Higher service take up then tax contributions at average £2,891 – nb real value
More 92% of 4 = effective and 4, with no efficient local adjustment service delivery
Local network membership £25 + admin savings of £439
Confidence in dealing with disadvantag ed people
Cost of diversity awareness training at £85
40% of 10 = 4, adjusted to 3 after deadweight
An important observation is that:
1
See appendices for assumptions and calculations
Families show significant hidden value Families put a high value on relationships and many people are affected. In assessing how long the changes last we generally judge that participant, family and state outcomes are all part of a virtuous circle that will continue and even grow. However MEAL’s influence on those outcomes will drop off fairly quickly as other influences take over. This is part of a conscious policy to avoid dependency. It means the value claimed reduces quickly in future years, but real value goes on growing. Community partners and museum staff experience less durable outcomes and this provides a management opportunity for improvement linked to participants’ needs on our uneven ladder:
We need joint local approaches to progression, which improve job satisfaction for employees as well as outcomes for participants.
Calculating our SROI Because of the significance of the museum’s inputs we allocated a higher than planned percentage of museum costs guided by visitor hours at 5% of overall costs, or £18K. Plus the project budget of £35K makes £53K in total. Commissioners of the programme are in effect benefitting from substantially more investment in participants than they are funding. A key learning is:
The importance of investing in the cultural heritage. In terms of returns, the highest values come from participants progressing towards work, with the linked benefit of reduced welfare payments also high value.
Even without targeting families, there is also considerable value generated here. Outcome
Value yr1
Progression towards the world of work
£76,956
Increased confidence and hope for the future
£12,963
Development of positive relationships
£7,885
Better family life
£22,672
Welfare payment savings
£56,843
More effective and efficient local service delivery
£1,855
Confidence in dealing with disadvantaged people
£275
Total
£179,450
With the benefits continuing at over £40K in year two, £12K in year three then £4K and £2K, the total return is £233K at present values. Against an investment of £53K, this is £4.40 of value for every £1 invested.
Using what we’ve learnt The analysis provides four key areas of learning on which MEAL and partners need to build: The value of happiness and emotional investment The hidden value in families Joint local approaches to progression The importance of investing in cultural heritage