The Dual Impact Collaboration Model (DICM)
Primary Impact
Geographically, businesses supporting programmes/services proven to be building healthier, safer and more resilient communities;
Secondary Impact
Sustained programmes/services leading-onto reductions in demand for and costs of frontline policing, health & community care, and criminal justice..
A collaborative public contracting framework embedded within 45 UK geographies, the DICM was built with senior public procurement leaders to address the following issues:
Public buyers need to "contract-in" relevant social value from their suppliers: within regions, public contracting is not joined-up and is missing the big issues and proven activities within UK communities.
Suppliers need to locally contribute to what's working: businesses are designing and delivering their own social value rather than being supportive of what is already evolving.
Local community providers are struggling to sustain their impact: community-led activities already delivering impact are being constrained/closed due to a lack of sustainable resources.
Hosted and facilitated within our UK ecosystem, the DICM establishes a interactive and research-based framework to help social value to flow into communities through police, council, NHS, fire & rescue, and criminal justice service buying:
(a) The model's 4 interconnecting elements provide a tool for public buyers, helping them build supply contracts with their business suppliers, which are connected into community needs and deliver social value as a visible contribution to wider strategic needs.
(b) Buyers can now validate and track supplier social value across the UK, seeing HOW & WHERE dual impact collaborations are building community health, safety and resilience.
(c) Ongoing local research and communications feeds into the DICM to pinpoint the evidence of dual impact; buyers able to track and report how their social value supports savings policing and criminal justice, health and community care, social mobility and overall cohesion.
Activities
Community activities already making dual impact are pre-validated and digitally positioned within regions for businesses to interact with.
Collaborations
The Social Purchase Order (SPO) process links with public contracting and helps businesses evidence social value collaborations with dual impact activity providers.
Measurement
The DICM's regional research hubs collect and evaluate longitudinal dual impact data to then provide insights and metrics to shape practice.
Engagement
Within regions, dedicated operations help in capturing, producing and promoting dual impact to build community awareness and engagement.
Maximising Civic University Pledges...
The DICM connects with higher education institutions through their published 'Civic University Pledge' to help the positive development of local communities.
This mobilises the pledges, whilst complementing core provisions:
- Aligning their procurement social value with wider public bodies.
- Connecting faculties and student learning into live dual impact activities inside communities.
- Commissioning academics to lead dual impact research operations within the DICM's 12 UK regions.
Strategically Aligned
Fundamentally, the DICM was built as a UK policing led solution for consolidating and driving social value into building safer communities.
However, strategically the model supports police leaders and elected Police & Crime Commissioners to foster additional engagement and buyer social value from their council, NHS, fire & rescue and CJS counterparts.
Within England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland the model is offered as strategic driver in the conversion of public contracted social value into a sustainable resource for realising the objectives of published Police and Crime Plans - also mapping onto the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) 2023, the Procurement Acts 2023 and the Serious Violence Duty 2022.
Thames Valley Police were instrumental in the creation and piloting of the DICM.
Thames Valley was the first of 45 UK police territories to use the model to align contracted social value with the Police and Crime Plan of their elected Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber.