Here at Universal Care Services, we take giving back to the community and improving society just as seriously as providing excellent care.
In order to ensure we are doing this, as a group Clece Care Services, including ourselves, are working towards our Silver accreditation for the Social Value Quality Mark.
What is the SVQM?
The Social Value Quality Mark is a symbol to funders, employees, and customers that our organisation stands for the highest community-focused standards. By Acquiring the mark we are contributing to equality and social change.
Last year we received our Bronze accreditation. The Bronze award marks the groups meaningful first steps to making a positive impact on society, care and the community. The bronze award shows ‘commitment’ to the series of pledges made, allowed us as a company to better understand social value (specific to our organisation) and gave us a clear view of how we create value for our staff, customers, and the surrounding communities.
At Universal Care Services, our social value pledges reflect the holistic approach to delivering services across 6 areas: Economic, Health and Wellbeing, Education and Skills, Social and Community, Employment and Volunteering, and Environmental. By focusing our resources and investments on these areas, we aim to nurture thriving communities, promote wellbeing, foster education and skills development, build resilient and inclusive societies, create meaningful employment opportunities, and safeguard our planet for future generations. These pledges are not just promises; they are actionable commitments that inform our service delivery, ensuring that every action we take contributes positively to the lives of those we touch.
Working towards our Silver Accreditation.
The silver award looks at ‘building’. Its a significant achievement for any organisation, and its main purpose is to build upon the pledges already made in the bronze award. Like stated earlier, these include Economic, Health and Wellbeing, Education and Skills, Social and Community, Employment and volunteering, and Environmental. Examples of these areas as pledges include: staff bag packing in local supermarkets in order to help the community, raising money for local charities and or bigger charities that are related to the health and social care sector, extra training for staff in areas such as mental health, specific sections of care that are changing/becoming more important. Universal Care Services have been implementing and working towards our silver accreditation for the past 10 months and we hope to have completed this by early 2025.
What’s next for Universal Care Services?
After we have completed and gained our silver social value quality mark, we will begin our journey to Gold. This looks at ‘embedding’ the social practices we have been working on, into day to day life for the business. We will have collected evidence for a full 12 months and will be ready to evaluate our impact on society and demonstrate the gold standard. Universal will have existing social value practices in place and we hope to have a mature social value strategy.
If you want to find out more about the Social Value Quality Mark and why its important for businesses to complete, you can follow the link below to the SVQM main website.
Independent Social Value Audit and Verification (socialvaluequalitymark.com)
Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn in order to see our process of working towards our silver Social Value accreditation.
