Can we get our heads around assessing the monetal value of the services we offer? Proving our worth through cost-benefit analysis could lead to long term funding in the Third Sector

‘There is considerable scope for the expansion of psychological therapy in the UK at present,’ argue Heather Hurford and David Seward in therapy today, May 2007. In this dawning era of an open market in health and social care provision, there is also an increasing emphasis on the importance of preventative and early-intervention services, such as community-based counselling. But Third Sector agencies that deliver many of these vital front-line preventative services may experience even greater financial pressure from the new market in commissioned contracts unless there is further balancing of the dynamics within that commissioning marketplace.

In a bid to strengthen the case for sustained investment in preventative services, a partnership of Hertfordshire-based agencies set out to calculate the extent of savings to the public purse which counselling might effect. Now they think they have the answer