As a society we often find it easier to value the things that are least important to us. For instance it is easy to estimate a new pair or running shoes, a week’s holiday or a brand-new Toyota. However, it is much more difficult to put a financial value on things that matter the most to us, such as feeling less stressed, feeling safe, being able to sleep or feeling a sense of wellbeing or hope.

SROI (Social Return on Investment) is a way of evaluating services; SROI uses a specific method to calculate benefits and outcomes that don’t have a simple market value, such as an improvement in mental health, or an increase in confidence. SROI involves working with those who are affected by the service to calculate how much the service was worth them, specifically by valuing the change that occurred for them as a result of the programme.

Family support groups work with families affected by addiction. SROI is well placed to assist in understanding at the value that family support provides for the families as well as for the person attending the group as well as other stakeholders such as addiction services.

This study takes a prudent approach to valuing the outcomes for family members managing issues of addiction that have affected their personal lives and lives of close loved ones. A benefit of an SROI is that it uses well-tested techniques to establish the value of outcomes, using money as a means of valuing how much these outcomes mean to those who receive them.