Evidencing the contribution of social enterprise in a local health and social care system: a conceptual framework

Since the late 1990s the concept of 'social enterprise' has achieved policy recognition in many countries as a possible means to reform health and social care system amid growing societal needs and financial constraints... [ view full abstract ]

Since the late 1990s the concept of 'social enterprise' has achieved policy recognition in many countries as a possible means to reform health and social care system amid growing societal needs and financial constraints (Teasdale, 2012). In fact one of the sectors in which social enterprises are heavily involved is health care. Nowadays, European countries are seeing the concept of social enterprise as the panacea for solving the economic and social crises Western countries are facing, without providing an evidence base of the effectiveness and efficiency of this new player (Roy et al., 2014). In recent decades, different instruments have been developed for understanding the results and contribution of social enterprises (Leeuw and Vaessen, 2009; Mulgan, 2010; Nicholls, 2009). However, there is still a lack of evidence of the role of social enterprise in health and social care and specifically there is a scarcity of evidence based data on health outcomes. Consequently, this paper aims to explore the feasibility of improving the evidence base via a controlled comparative study of a community-based health focussed social enterprise initiative in rural Scotland. The objective is to create, together with identified stakeholders, a protocol for studying the impact of the selected social enterprise. To assess the feasibility of such a study and to create a protocol, a qualitative approach, based on semi structured interviews (n=10) and observation was used and is reported on here. A purposive sampling of the most important stakeholders of the social enterprise has been undertaken in attempting to cover all the key constituencies of relevance to the subject matter. Enough diversity is included in the sample for understanding how the different roles affect the views. This paper will report, from a stakeholder perspective, on whether more quantitative, comparative studies are possible in this field and what the design of such a study might look like.