BENEFITS: Building Economic, Needs-Based and Environmental evaluation Frameworks for Inclusive Transformation of Social services in Europe

Public and private social services—including healthcare, education, childcare, employment, and housing support—play a critical role in ensuring the well-being and functioning of societies, particularly during times of crisis. Despite significant investments in the sector, traditional methods of evaluating their impact often focus solely on monetary costs, failing to capture the broader social, economic, and environmental benefits these services provide to individuals, communities, and society as a whole.
Aims
The BENEFITS project will build on current innovative methodologies to develop a Holistic Appraisal Framework to measure the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services. The ultimate goal of this Framework is to support policymakers, service providers, and researchers in making evidence-based decisions, ensuring that investments in social services are accurately accounted for and aligned with community needs.
The project will also seek to actively engage with citizens to keep them informed of data related to social services and to involve them in the co-design, co-development and piloting of policy interventions that promote the uptake and scaling-up of social services.
Main target groups
- Policy makers including local authorities
- Social service providers
- Researchers
- Users of social services
- General Public
Activities
- Development of a Holistic Appraisal Framework to measure the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services.
- Development of the Social Services Policy Observatory (SSPO), which aims to document, assess, evaluate, and co-design policies across multilevel governance in the European Union.
- Launch a BENEFITS Visualisations Platform which 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.
- 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.
Duration
01/01/2025-31/12/2027
Partnership
- Coordinator: Social Action and Innovation Centre (KMOP, Greece)
- University College London (UK)
- Headway (Greece)
- webLyzard technology (Austria)
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)
- European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD, EU)
- Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza (Spain)
- Support Group Network (Sweden)
- Oxfam Italia (Italy)
- EthosLab PC (Greece)
Contact
Rachel Vaughan, Head of Operations
Miguel Buitrago, Learning and Development Officer
Funding