Feeling Uplifted - A Social Return On Investment Evaluative Analysis of the Kirklees Advocacy Services first year of Operation 2011-12

What this report involved This report was completed by first identifying three key groups of stakeholders for the Kirklees Advocacy Service. They were: Service users including users of 1:1 support, peer network members and peer advocates (volunteers) Commissioners those who funded the service Referrers those who referred others to the service

Each group were contacted with bespoke questionnaires sent to Commissioners and referrers and a mixture of focus group, 1:1 interviews and questionnaires offered to service users. Some 11 service users took part in interviews (12% of all service users), although the response from referrers and commissioners was much poorer (2 questionnaires returned from a total of 25 sent out). In developing this internal analysis for Touchstone, I have designed a change model that identifies the stakeholder groups and the value they place on the service separately. Care has been taken to avoid duplication in the claims made and the limited response from 2 stakeholder groups has led to conservative estimates for the benefits the service brings these groups. In identifying financial proxies as values within this change model, the choices made have reflected examples offered by stakeholders. For instance, in describing the value of group meetings one respondent compared it to a session he had experienced from local providers Support 2 Recovery and I have estimated the costs for the delivery of that session from our organisations understanding of staffing costs. In other cases such as when considering the potentially positive impact upon health, proxies have been sought dealing with lowered prescription and GP costs from established research. The Benefits of the Kirklees Advocacy Service to its stakeholders 1. Service users In assessing the change caused by the provision of the service within its first year, service users identified different benefits depending on their involvement with the service: 1:1 service users people using an advocate identified the greater ability to plan for themselves, to help others and to feel well. Peer network users people who are part of the services peer networks clearly added to the services impact in a number of anecdotes shared with me. My analysis has concentrated more on the amount of time created by this mode of delivery rather than its impact. Peer volunteers people who have become volunteers for the service after using it have generated a sizable number of extra advocacy hours for the service and speak of being more employable. Again the analysis concentrates on the hours yielded.

2. Referrers the benefits of being able to refer to our service are summarised as being that of freeing up capacity and of ensuring representation. To be conservative, the analysis concentrates on the freed up capacity. 3. Commissioners the benefits to the funders of the advocacy service were greater legal compliance of other commissioned services, increased applications for self directed support and increased service quality of other commissioned services. The larger figure involved in my analysis relates to reduced risks of litigation from former patients. Summary finding This analysis is a purely evaluative one of the first year of the Kirklees Advocacy Service. The service began on the 1st April 2011 and received funding of 51,300 for its first year of operation. My analysis suggests that the service created benefits to its stakeholders that I have valued around 160, 000. Applying stress test methodology to this estimation, it could be argued that this benefit could be valued some 40,000 less by applying different proxy values on the element of legal compliance. Therefore, it would be possibly more accurate to talk of value of between 120,000 and 160,000. Expressing this value in respect of the services funding, this analysis suggests that for every pound that was invested in the service, value of between 2.40 and 3.15 was estimated to have been achieved. John White, Touchstone Operations Director, October 2012