Understanding the Benefits of a Social Care Programme The client The WAVE Trust focus on improving the welfare of children through preventing child maltreatment. The client’s problem The WAVE Trust needed to understand the cost and benefits of their social care programme ‘Pioneer Communities’ to support their business case for funding from Local Authorities. The solution A review of current cost benefit data in their business case Suggested methods for benefit data collection that will stand up to scrutiny. A model that uses cost and benefit data to calculate a cost profile and payback period. A report suggesting ways to improve their ability to do cost benefit analysis The approach I initially spent a day with the WAVE Trust team to understand how developed their business case was. I found that they had a good understanding of the costs of the social case programme but had not defined the benefits and tied these to financial savings for Local Authorities. I therefore focussed on identifying ways to identify and quantify the benefits of ‘Pioneer Communities’. I also built a cost/benefit model that would take the data and provide them with analysis that would support their business case. I talked the WAVE Trust through my ideas and also wrote it up for them for future use. The benefits Gave the WAVE Trust use of a capability they don’t have Delivered a plan to follow to build a compelling business case backed up by defensible and transparent analysis I got the valuable experience of working on a problem very different to my usual work