Mental health illnesses start young through trauma and life experiences and can last a lifetime. Yet so can positive traits, self-care and strengths.
We spend a lot of time chasing solutions for things that have happened and very little time on what might happen. Our social strategy is to correct when we see the problem.
Yet the NHS is able to invest in preventative and early diagnosis strategies, as with cancer. This is because there is a clear and universally trusted link between what we can see now and what we are likely to see. Initiatives such as cancer screening rely on a mathematical formula which is trusted to predict a likely future outcome based on a current observation.
At Evolve: A Social Impact Company we have investigated this linkage. We apply it to early identification of emerging support needs in the children our Health Mentors work with. More interestingly, in terms of this article, we have also developed a way to model the linkage between the well-being and other improvements in young people today and the likely life benefits they will also experience in the future. We call this the Full Value Contract (FVC) and the linkage model we call the Universally Trusted Proxy (UTP).
By creating a trusted linkage and more standardised definitions we create a framework for the development of a new marketplace. For social impact providers, such as Evolve, there is accreditation, as in being accepted as having interventions which meet the current impact criteria of one or more UTPs. This would demonstrate they are able to drive the future impact through immediate action. For the commissioners this creates a pool of credible and proven suppliers. Critically, suppliers who are able to deliver to the same output specifications. This means commissioners are able to make strategic commissions with multiple suppliers to drive systemic changes. Investor capital has been struggling to enter the market due to low deal size. With strategic commissions the deal flow and size would both increase and become more attractive.
We believe FVC can play a central role in driving social impact at scale, by providing a market for commissioners, social impact providers and investors. Here are two short videos which provide an overview. Please get in touch if you wish to join our exploration.
