We are excited to let you know that Dr Marie Polley MBE has recently written a guest blog for Social Value Business!  

Social Value Business specialises in consultancy specialising in social value measurement, Social Return on Investment (SROI), impact evaluation and economic modelling. The organisation supports public, private and voluntary sector organisations to understand, evidence and communicate the wider social value created through their activities and interventions.

If you'd like to read Marie's blog it is reproduced in full below but can also be found here Social Value Business | Measurable Impact & Support

When deciding social value measures, it can be easy to 'lift and drop' solutions. But the real value comes from understanding what matters, argues guest blogger Dr Marie Polley MBE. (All words and opinions are Marie's own).

Understanding your social value starts with understanding the local needs of your clients and communities. Indeed, the emerging neighbourhood health model is all about understanding hyperlocal needs and determining how services can coexist in local settings to best support these needs.

In my 25 years of designing, implementing and evaluating holistic approaches to health and wellbeing, a few things have continued to ring true.

We need to keep monitoring simple and human

For organisations supporting people's wellbeing, monitoring and measuring your service is essential. Core monitoring should show whether you're meeting clients' needs using the minimum data necessary. That usually means a short, validated outcome measure that fits naturally into the consultation. The challenge for many organisations is choosing what to collect: enough to represent the breadth of your offer, but not so much that it burdens staff or clients. The best measures flow with the conversation and make people feel heard, not interrogated.

Social determinants risk being missed

In today's society, social inequalities are getting wider, healthy life expectancy is getting worse and cost of living is continually rising. So, it is likely that whilst your organisation is supporting people in a specific domain, issues around the social determinants of health are frequently coming into the conversations. It is also likely that many staff are supporting clients above and beyond their job description and sourcing all sorts of additional information. If you only rely on referral notes or a fixed intake form, you risk missing the things that matter most to the people you serve.

Avoiding the lift-and-shift trap is key

When deciding what to measure, ask yourselves if you even know what the priority for your clients. If you feel under pressure, it can be tempting to adopt an outcome measure because you've seen it elsewhere, without proper testing – the 'lift and shift' effect. But measures validated for one population don't always transfer cleanly to another. Language, scope and context matter. Using the wrong measure risks poor data and disengaged staff.

It's vital to start with the right question

After 25 years working in personalised services and running countless evaluations, I've learned one simple truth: never assume you know what worries a person most. Build trust, then ask.

The single most revealing question is: what concerns or problems do you most want support with? Let people name their priority and rate its severity alongside their wellbeing. That one change transforms monitoring from a box-ticking exercise into a genuine conversation.

Measure Yourself Concerns and Wellbeing (MYCaW®)

Twenty years ago, I evaluated a breast cancer charity and helped develop Measure Yourself Concerns and Wellbeing (MYCaW®). The tool asks people to state their main concern, rate its severity and rate their wellbeing. At follow-up, the same items are re-rated so change can be measured. Crucially, people also say what mattered most about the support they received — and it's almost always the human things: care, kindness, love, compassion, continuity and being heard. MYCaW® is now used internationally and accredited by the NHS for supported self-management because it lets people define what matters to them.

MYCaW® allows a person to state the item they want to rate. We know following years of analysis that there are around 60 categories of main concerns, grouped into physical, mental and emotional, general wellbeing, practical, and information/service needs. About 20 concerns appear consistently across services, but their proportions shift by geography. That's why hyperlocal insight is vital: understanding local needs improves support and makes your social value reporting more accurate.

Illuminating the people behind the data

I remember an older woman moving into assisted living whose top concern wasn't falling or mobility — it was finding a loving home for her cat. In another evaluation, someone attending a musculoskeletal return-to-work programme named urgent dentistry as their main worry because their dentist had closed before they received dentures. Nothing to do with the service they were being offered, but a fundamental need.

So, as you start on your journey to demonstrate your social value, begin with the people in front of you. Make sure you have taken the time to fully capture what matters to them, and your social value will follow.

With thanks to guest blogger Dr Marie Polley MBE, Co-Founder and Director of Research, Evaluation and Insight at Meaningful Measures Ltd. All words and opinions are Marie's own.