BENEFITS - Measuring the Value added of Social Services

BENEFITS will develop a Holistic Appraisal Framework to measure the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services. This framework consists of innovative research, technology and experimental solutions based on active citizen engagement to provide well-founded evidence on social services’ social and economic returns. BENEFITS sets up a research and engagement plan in multiple countries to identity, measure and visualise the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services as well as the enabling, inhibiting and mitigating factors that will allow for scale-up of the positive effects of social services while ensuring a prosperous, inclusive and just transition that works for all. Combining the outcomes of these activities, we aim to develop a new methodological framework of economic appraisal and test scalable experimental solutions that can better measure social services’ economic and social value-added. Building on existing innovative valuation methods and the “beyond-GDP”, we will leverage insights from economics, social, behavioural, and political sciences as well as citizens and policymakers to co-develop and implement the holistic appraisal framework.

BENEFITS will consolidate these findings by developing the Social Services Policy Observatory, which aims to document, assess, evaluate, and co-design policies across multilevel governance in the European Union while documenting citizen’s responses to these policies through active deliberations. These processes (SSPO and deliberations) will occur simultaneously throughout the project on the BENEFITS Visualisations Platform. This innovative technological solution will collect, document and visualise data from various sources (i.e., social media, news outlets, and the web) on issues related to the provision of social services, welfare, and prosperity providing citizens, stakeholders, and policymakers the necessary information to promote change Through data and insights collected from the research, experiments, the Observatory, and the Platform; BENEFITS will build a Policy Evaluation Toolkit (EVAL-KIT) which will include policy designs and recommendations to promote the uptake and value scaling up of social services.