Hear Her Voice at Work: Taking Action for Lasting Social Change

Hear Her Voice at Work: Taking Action for Lasting Social Change

by Mary Finnigan,Transaction Director, Civitas Investment Management

As we approach the end of 2024, I have been reflecting on how we, at Civitas, have been acting to enable positive future social change: both for women (as encouraged by the editors of Women In Social Housing in this column!) and also for other underserved groups and individuals. Our fantastic team of wonderful men and women has worked with many people over the last year who have benefited from assistance, encouragement, example, or sometimes, just simple access to information, to fulfil their potential and change their lives.

Civitas is the UK’s largest provider of community-based healthcare housing and specialist educational schools. Our investments aim to increase the supply and quality of essential real estate which enables the delivery of care and support to some of the most vulnerable people in society, many of whom have significant and complex needs. We have a core focus on the social and experiential relevance of our properties with impact considerations embedded throughout the investment process. However, it doesn’t stop there, it is important to us that the underlying individuals within our properties feel settled, cared for and supported and that their life outcomes are improved through the experience of living in a Civitas property. So, what have we been doing to make sure that our investments positively impact those benefitting from them and are transformative?

First of all, we have established a Quality Assurance Board of highly experienced qualified clinicians to work closely with our care provider partners to provide monitoring and oversight of the quality-of-care delivery across our portfolios in addition to the regulatory oversight of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). As investors in the real estate, we have no legal responsibility for the care delivery, but we take our social responsibility very seriously and our view is that the success of our properties is dependent on the quality of care received by our residents.

In addition, our Asset Management Team works closely and proactively with our partners to ensure our properties continue to be safe for the needs of the individuals and meet our quality standards. The team also participate in volunteering days, such as gardening and painting with some of our residents, and from independent impact reports undertaken it is established that over 86% of tenants are happy with their homes, and on our forward funded portfolio it was reported that 60⁺% of tenants saw improved confidence, independence and quality of their support network improve.   

As well as focusing on the outcomes of individuals in our properties, we have also been thinking more widely about our social responsibility to influence future outcomes. In particular, this year as a team, we have been doing more to positively influence social mobility for the next generation of school-leavers, so that all children no matter what their socio-economic background can have a better chance to follow their ambitions and achieve their goals.  This includes the Transactions Team running several workshop sessions in partnership with some of our panel law firms for secondary school students participating in PRIME work experience programmes (PRIME is an alliance of law firms and in-house legal teams seeking to improve access to, and socio-economic diversity within, the legal profession). Without a shadow of a doubt, these sessions have been a team highlight this year: we were completely bowled over by the energy and enthusiasm of the students, by their insights and questions. It takes a lot of courage on the part of the students to apply for the work experience programmes, to come to a city and enter a law firm building for the first time, to put themselves in a completely new environment.

In pursuit of this, I am privileged to have recently joined the board of PRIME, to play a greater role in offering access and opportunity to participating students. I hope that by acting now and helping to make their initial experience of work less overwhelming, we’re in some small way helping to break down barriers and enable future generations to change their lives today.

*For more info about Civitas visit our website www.civitasim.com.

*For more info about PRIME Commitment (https://primecommitment.co.uk) and how you may be able to get involved, please contact Mary on [email protected]