Social Investment
in long-term care

The purpose of this tool is to provide an indication of the costs and outcomes associated with LTC to understand the Social Return on Investment (SROI). It requires users to answer a series of impact questions. These are generally agreed upon dimensions that allow us to account for the key issues associated with the impacts of activities.

You may have existing evidence that can be included in the tool. Alternatively, it can help identify where further evidence is required. By answering the impact questions, results demonstrate what is most important to different stakeholders - this helps us to understand the overall impact of activities, and also identifies opportunities to focus resources on those activities that create most value.

The tool allows users to include tangible and intangible outcomes of LTC interventions for a range of stakeholders/actors. It is recommended that you answer the questions with reference to the Principles of Social Value and SROI that place importance on the involvement of stakeholders to understand the relevant outcomes of LTC and their significance.

To calculate an SROI and understand the relative importance of different outcomes it is important that outcomes are presented in the same language as their costs of production. Financial proxies are used to represent the value of different outcomes. For tangible outcomes suitable proxies are readily available, often in the form of opportunity or replacement costs. For intangible outcomes such as changes to health and wellbeing, financial proxies are less concrete. It is also less likely that this evidence currently exists. Therefore, alternative financial proxies have been included that are intended to demonstrate the potential to value such changes. These are based on existing evidence and research and converted into values for the different European nations. It is however recommended that locally-specific values are included as approaches develop and mature.