Payment by results and social impact bonds: Outcome‐based payment systems in the UK and USKevinAlbertson, ChrisFox, ChrisO'Leary, GaryPainter, KimberlyBailey, and JessicaLabarberaBristol: Policy Press, 2018. ISBN: 9781447340706; £45 (Hbk)

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-529
Author(s):  
Stephen Crossley
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Payment Systems ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
The Uk

Review of the evidence for outcome-based payment systems

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Albertson ◽  
Chris Fox ◽  
Chris O’leary ◽  
Gary Painter ◽  
Kimberly Bailey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Payment Systems ◽  
Performance Management Systems ◽  
Current State ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Us Findings ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This chapter reviews the current state of evidence on what works in outcomes-based commissioning using published evaluations of Payment by Results (PbR) and Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) in the UK and SIBs in the US. Findings from these evaluations are arranged under the following broad headings: designing and commissioning, development of markets, performance management, innovation, the role of incentives, and overall outcomes. The evaluations address issues such as the complexity of PbR commissioning models compared to other commissioning exercises, the impact of PbR on the market for social goods, and the development of new or enhanced performance management systems as a result of outcomes-based commissioning. Two areas of innovation are also highlighted: innovation in service design and delivery, and innovation in financing.

scholarly journals Social impact bonds and fast policy: Analyzing the Australian experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2094152
Author(s):  
Jacob Broom
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Impact Investing ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Australian Experience ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Do So

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are attracting an increasing amount of critical scholarly attention. As an outcomes-based mechanism for financing social services, SIBs financialize social policy through the logic of impact investing. Responding to calls for attention to the politics of SIBs’ development, and breaking with the literature’s focus on cases from the UK and USA, this article explores the emergence of SIBs in Australia. It employs the concept of “fast policy,” which theorizes why and how policies move across borders, and describes the contemporary conditions that enable them to do so. Using document analysis, the article explores the discursive devices and practices used to justify the “pulling in” of SIBs to states in Australia. It finds that key actors in the Australian social impact world justified SIBs’ adoption using their synergy with powerful, popular policy discourses and practices, rather than engaging in political debates about their desirability. The Australian experience illuminates the power of intermediaries and the investors they represent over the design and proliferation of SIBs, as well as the roles played by austerity politics, policy experimentalism, and fast policy infrastructures in producing a context in which SIBs could be made real.

Outcomes-based contracts in the UK public sector

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Chris Fox ◽  
Kevin Albertson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Service Provider ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Working Capital ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
The Uk

A major innovation in public sector commissioning in recent years is the recourse of the state to so called ‘Outcomes-based Contracts’ particularly Payment by Results (PbR) in the UK. A PbR contract contains three elements, a commissioner, a service provider and an outcomes metric. The outcomes metrics is designed, in theory, to align the incentive structures of the commissioner and the service delivery agency so as to achieve efficient results. Thus, PbR is theorised to allow public commissioners to pay a provider of services on the basis of specified outcomes achieved rather than the inputs or outputs delivered. A related innovation is that of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). SIBs are distinguished from PbR contracts in that they supposedly allow financiers to contribute to the social innovation process by providing working capital. The return on the SIB is calculated using PbR methodology. Compared to a PbR contract, the SIB contract seeks to align the incentive structures, not only of commissioners and providers, but also financiers through an appropriate metrics-based payments scheme. PbR and SIBs have been referred to as key tools for delivering change. In this chapter we set out the theoretical and practical challenges arising from the development and application of PbR and SIBs and consider the evidence of their efficacy or otherwise.

scholarly journals On the transformation of children at-risk into an investment proposition: A study of Social Impact Bonds as an anti-market device

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Neyland
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Children At Risk ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Uk

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government accelerated a number of market-based interventions into public problems. Experimenting with new forms of intervention provided a moment to effectively problematize the public sector as a whole and its budgets, opening up for discussion the basis for making an intervention, and the methods and costs involved. Questions were posed of the apparently irreducible costs associated with supposedly intractable problems of government (such as homelessness, vulnerable children or crime). In particular, crisis and austerity became a means to give new momentum to a series of experimental ways to shape the social investment market that had been under discussion in various forms since at least 2000. Social Impact Bonds form one particular type of intervention. They involve drawing together investors with delivery agencies, the third sector and national and local government, coordinated by a commissioner. In the recent move by the UK government to set up and use Social Impact Bonds, much has been made of the opportunity they represent to introduce competition, efficiency, efficacy, private sector thinking and investment to a range of different social problems. As the first results of these experiments are now emerging, this article reports on a study conducted into a market-based intervention that experiments with the transformation of ‘children at-risk’ into an investment proposition through a Social Impact Bond. The article suggests that the Social Impact Bond can be usefully explored by drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) treatments of markets as collective, heterogeneous assemblages. However, in contrast to scholars who focus on market devices, the article argues that the Social Impact Bond in practice operates as something akin to an anti-market device. The article begins with an introduction to Social Impact Bonds. It then explores the means through which market-based competition and an investment proposition were anticipated, but did not emerge through the composition and enactment of the Bond. It concludes with an assessment of the anti-market device and the future of Social Impact Bonds.

scholarly journals Social Impact Bonds: The Role of Private Capital in Outcome-Based Commissioning

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL EDMISTON ◽  
ALEX NICHOLLS
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Private Capital ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
The Uk

AbstractSocial impact bonds are payment by results contracts that leverage private social investment to cover the up-front expenditure associated with welfare services. The introduction of private principles and actors through outcome-based commissioning has received a great deal of attention in social policy research. However, there has been much less attention given to the introduction of private capital and its relation to more established forms of quasi-marketisation. This paper examines what effect private social investment has on outcome-based commissioning and whether the alternative forms of performance measurement and management, that social impact bonds bring to bear on service operations, demonstrate the capacity to engender: innovation in service delivery; improved social outcomes; future cost savings; and additionality. This paper draws on an in-depth study of four social impact bonds in the UK context, asthewelfare regime at the vanguard of this policy development. The findings suggest that the introduction of private capital in outcome-based commissioning has had a number of unique and unintended effects on service providers, operations and outcomes. The paper concludes by considering whether social impact bonds represent a risk or an opportunity for public service reform both in the UK and further afield.

scholarly journals Social impact bonds in the UK homeless sector: perspectives of front-line link workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Thomas George ◽  
Jim Rogers ◽  
Amanda Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Outcome Measures ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Funding Mechanism ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Specific Outcome ◽  
Funded Project ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Critical Literature

Purpose Social impact bonds (SIBs) have become a favoured way to fund public services, including housing, prison and homelessness projects, in an era of austerity. In a growing critical literature on SIBs, a largely absent voice is that of the link worker. This paper aims to focus on the views of link workers in a SIB funded project which works with long-term entrenched rough sleepers in the East of England. Design/methodology/approach Interviews with link workers were conducted with a thematic analysis echoing many of the views expressed in the critical literature not only about the problems but also some of the advantages that SIBs offer to this type of project. Findings Three key themes were discomfort with the funding mechanism; flexible and innovative interventions that SIBs make possible; and problems with the outcome measures that trigger payments. This study concludes that if SIBs are to achieve their promise of providing funding which leads to effective solutions to deeply ingrained social problems, there needs to be more careful evaluation of their true benefits in comparison to publicly funded projects, adoption of more appropriate and project-specific outcome measures and a much clearer explanation and justification of the way in which SIB funding works. Originality/value Few studies have specifically explored the perceptions of front-line link workers in the homelessness sector. This study highlights not only the concerns but also the benefits associated with the use of SIB as a funding mechanism within the homelessness sector.

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