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  • 3 minutes
  • 19/08/2022
15382

Member story: STAR Procurement and Depaul UK

STAR Procurement chose Depaul UK to provide support for care leavers and people who are homeless. Using Social Value Portal, they’ve reported on over £300,000 of value created for their local community.

STAR Procurement operates on behalf of a variety of councils in the North-west to procure goods and services, with a strong commitment to social value. We support them to report on the social value of their suppliers and together, we ensure councils contract suppliers deliver the best value for their communities. 

In 2020 Stockport Council asked STAR to procure solutions to address homelessness in their community. After the tendering process, STAR brought on Depaul UK to begin work on two contracts.
Depaul UK is a youth homelessness charity with over 30 years of experience working across the country. As part of their contract, they set up a support service for young care leavers, and also a hostel for people who are homeless in the area. Depaul UK not only takes people off the streets, but supports and nurtures them into work or further education.

Life changing support inside and outside the organisation

Since beginning their contract Depaul UK has created an extraordinary £300,000 in social and local economic value against a target of £169,000, 77.4% over their committed delivery to date.

 Social Value Portal is really useful for us. Although we monitor what we do, we don’t measure it in financial terms. Having the ability to do so has been really interesting and wasn’t something we had experience of doing before we began to work with STAR.

This includes £147,000 through local employment – 10% over their target, and translates to three local full time staff.

Further initiatives such as ‘Steps to Success’ have created an extraordinary amount of social value.

Steps to success

The ‘Steps to Success’ programme invites two to four people that Depaul UK work with to attend weekly skills sessions at their centre. These two-hour sessions provide skills that ensure attendees are ‘work ready’.
By the time attendees graduate from the scheme, they are equipped with a range of skills to help them start their career, and a clear vision for where they want to be in the future.
Steps to Success alone has so far delivered £103,000 of social and local economic value.
Simone Newham is the UK Regional Director at Depaul UK. She reflected on the role Social Value Portal has played in their social value.


“Social Value Portal is really useful for us. Although we monitor what we do, we don’t measure it in financial terms. Having the ability to do so has been really interesting and wasn’t something we had experience of doing before we began to work with STAR.”

This social value translates into life changing opportunities for many.

Tom left the care system at 18. He ended up needing support from the state after a difficult upbringing.
Tom found that he had no knowledge of the basics of day-to-day adult life, such as bills and budgeting, and he had no one to ask. By the time he turned 19, Tom was sleeping in a hostel and burdened by thousands of pounds of debt. Depaul UK stepped up to help him get into accommodation. With their help, Tom was finally debt free ten months later.
“Basically, I can pretty much say this in one sentence. My experience with the care system: not the best. My experience with Depaul: helped me a lot more than the care system did. The people that actually work at Depaul, they know what they’re doing. They help you out. They always want the best for anyone that stays there, I know that.”