Chris Fox Introduced Payment by Results Model in Helsinki

CoSIE project attended the afternoon seminar organized on 14th of June in Helsinki. Seminar was part of the launch of book on “Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds: Outcome-based Payment Systems in the UK and US”. Authors of the newly published book, prof. Chris Fox and prof. Gary Painter, presented the theoretical background and introduced some UK and US examples of payment by results model.

“Social Impact Bonds and Payment by Results represent an innovative and radical approach to commissioning and funding important social services,” said Chris Fox, professor at the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University.

In practice, payment by results allows the government to pay a provider of the services on basis of the outcomes their service has achieved instead of inputs and outputs. Outcomes-based financing in the social services is shifting the focus on outcomes rather than outputs and on prevention rather than treatment. The ideal is to pay for “what actually works”. Based on their findings, the authors state that this new approach has potential for addressing social challenges that have proven resistant to traditional policy responses.

“This is a new strategy and funding method for social services that a lot of people in the field still don’t fully understand. I felt it was essential to make this contribution now to help those working in spaces where they might consider Social Impact Bonds to drive social change,” said co-author Gary Painter, a professor at USC Sol Price Center for Social Innovation.

SITRA, Finnish Innovation Fund, has facilitated the birth of the first SIBs in Finland. In the seminar senior expert Anna Tonteri introduced the Finnish SIB examples that have their own characteristics based on the Nordic welfare state context.

News text by
Mira Lehti, Project Manager of CoSIE, Turku University of Applied Sciences