NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts.  Its mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation. It does this in three main ways:

The HIA is testing a new approach to accelerating social innovation through the creation and support of start-up social ventures, including hands-on support and innovative funding terms, such as equity, quasi-equity, convertible loans, as well as grants.  Its focus is on the management of long-term chronic diseases and the overall ambition is support to social ventures with the potential to transform public services.

The evaluation, which will run over five years, has been designed to examine both the HIA as a model for promoting and supporting social innovation and the impact of the new social ventures in terms of improving the lives of people with long-term conditions.  The evaluation has three key elements:

1. The Evaluation of the HIA as a model will generate learning about how elements of the HIA - for example, the selection of ideas which may be developed into new enterprises, the prototyping of new initiatives and brokering access to sources of support and finance - might be developed and refined to achieve the best results.  The evaluation will also examine the effectiveness of the HIA model in promoting social innovation in the complex area of health and social care.
    
2. The evaluation of the new social ventures will explore four main themes – the resilience of the social ventures (including financial resilience), activity and service delivery, social impact (at both an individual and community level) and system influence and potential - in particular the scope for scaling up/replication and the likelihood of wider influence on the delivery of health and social care.  The evaluation team will also be drawing on the findings to identify case studies which may be of wider interest at key points in the development of the HIA.
    
3. A peer learning network will also be created to bring together social entrepreneurs from the social ventures supported by the HIA, members of the HIA team and individuals from other similar start up organisations.  The network, which is planned to meet for the first time in summer 2008, will encompass both “virtual” and face-to-face elements and will link closely to the evaluation process.

The evaluation team will be working closely with colleagues from the Young Foundation and NESTA to ensure that learning from the evaluation is shared throughout the life of the evaluation.  In particular, an Interim Report, focusing on the process of establishing the HIA and early learning from the first social ventures, will be available in autumn 2008 and the evaluation team will be presenting at the joint NESTA/NHS Institute Health Innovation Conference in November.

The evaluation is being led by Liz Newbronner and Acton Shapiro’s evaluation team includes three Third Sector specialists - Meg Abdy, Margaret Bolton and Jean Barclay.  For further information about the evaluation, please contact Liz on 01653 691351 or email her on liz@actonshapiro.co.uk.