Social services: economic and social returns and value added

Call updates

Jun 14, 2024 3:46:38 PM

FLASH EVALUATION results

HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01

Published: 07/12/2022

Opened: 04/10/2023

Deadline: 07/02/2024

The total budget for the call was EUR 96.000.000.

The results of the evaluation for each topic are as follows:

HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-04

Budget for the topic: EUR 10.000.000

Number of proposals submitted (including proposals transferred from or to other calls): 9

Number of inadmissible proposals: 0

Number of ineligible proposals: 2

Number of above-threshold proposals: 5

Total budget requested for above-threshold proposals: EUR 14869492,5

Number of proposals retained for funding: 3

Number of proposals in the reserve list: 1

Funding threshold: 12

(Proposals with the same score were ranked according to the priority order procedure set out in the call conditions (see in the General Annexes to the Work Programme or specific arrangements in the specific call/topic conditions).

Ranking distribution:

Number of proposals with scores lower or equal to 15 and higher or equal to 14: 1

Number of proposals with scores lower than 14 and higher or equal to 13: 0

Number of proposals with scores lower than 13 and higher or equal to 10: 4

Summary of observer report:

The independent observer was appointed by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) to observe the evaluation process of the single stage calls:

• HORIZON-CL2-2024-HERITAGE-01

• HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01

• HORIZON-CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01.

The same independent observer reviewed the evaluation of the three calls. This enabled the observer to follow the entire process, to identify strengths and areas for possible improvements specific to the single stage evaluation, and to compare procedures and practices of a fully online evaluation with online consensus meetings and online discussions.

REA staff ensured that for the topics associated to these 3 calls, all actors involved were fully informed about the background guidance and legal documents, procedures and standards of quality. The organization and management were very challenging because of the large number of topics and proposals. Interdisciplinarity embedded in the call texts added layers to the overall complexity.

The overall evaluation process was executed in full compliance with the procedures, code of conduct, and guiding principles of fairness, transparency and equal treatment of proposals. The rules and guiding principles for the procedures concerning each evaluation step were known in advance to the applicants, the evaluators and all the persons involved in the evaluations. The briefing materials made available to the external experts were of the highest quality as they provided all the relevant information in a clear and comprehensive way. Experts were asked to declare any potential conflict of interest and to ensure confidentiality of all information. The evaluation process was robust. No preferential treatment of any proposal was observed by the observer or reported by any expert. The discussions were fair and consistent with open and detailed online deliberations covering all the criteria and sub criteria to ensure clarity of issues (both in remote discussion meetings and/or in written communications within the evaluation system) arising and providing impartial feedback to applicants. REA continues putting significant effort into assigning proposals to evaluation groups that cover all the key disciplines relevant to the topic and provides structured training to moderators on how to help experts bridge barriers between disciplines through informed discussions that leave sufficient space for each discipline.

We recently informed the applicants about the evaluation results for their proposals.

For questions, please contact the Research Enquiry Service.

Feb 8, 2024 6:53:40 PM

PROPOSAL NUMBERS

The call HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01 has closed on 07.02.2024.

272 proposals have been submitted.

The breakdown per topic is:

HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-04: 9 proposals

Evaluation results are expected to be communicated in June 2024.

Oct 4, 2023 12:00:01 AM

The submission session is now available for: HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-04(HORIZON-RIA)

Social services: economic and social returns and value added

TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-04

Programme: Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON)
Call: A sustainable future for Europe (HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01)
Type of action: HORIZON-RIA HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
Type of MGA: HORIZON Action Grant Budget-Based [HORIZON-AG]
Deadline model: single-stage
Planned opening date: 04 October 2023
Deadline date: 07 February 2024 17:00:00 Brussels time

ExpectedOutcome:
Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

Well-founded evidence on the social and economic returns of social services, including interlinkages between child poverty and gaps in access to social services, and interlinkages in access to employment and access to social services.
Improved understanding of the channels through which social services may foster and accelerate a fair green and digital transition.
Identification and use of the best methodology to capture and measure the value added of the provision of social services, including informal social services, in the EU Member States and Associated Countries in different geographical areas (rural and urban).
Scope:
Social services have a fundamental role in our society, safeguarding and promoting the welfare and well-being of vulnerable groups (e.g. migrants, people with disabilities, homeless, youth at risk, and more in general, unemployed people, low-income and poor households and women). The proposals should consider social services in a broad manner, including both universal social services of general interest such as healthcare, education, as well as other social services childcare, employment services, long-term care and social inclusion services for persons at risk of poverty and social exclusion (including counselling, coaching, mentoring, crisis centres or shelters, housing support services). The proposals should also take into account the unequal availability of social services between rural and urban areas. A special attention should also be given to the different roles of social services in the context of the fair green and digital transition (e.g. supporting working-age adults with caring responsibilities to take up good quality jobs, which contribute to the twin transitions in particular in the regions most affected by the transition from fossil fuel or carbon intensive industries).

Concerning the economic and social returns of these services, the proposals should focus on estimating the impacts from a life course perspective (including through age-dependent models), on children (development in their childhood and also into adulthood),on the employment and income situation of adults of investments in healthcare and education, including childcare and extracurricular activities for the children, but also other services such as housing and nutrition and long term care for the elderly. Such impacts should in particular be estimated in terms of employment outcomes and household incomes.

More generally, linked with the “beyond GDP” approach, it is important to analyse how to better measure the actual value added of the provision of public social services, primarily in terms of monetary valuation. Currently the value added of the public provision of social services is considered into national accounts at production prices (when there are no price associated to the related services) or also sometimes at the (reduced) price the related services are financed.

However, the actual added value of the provision of these services is meant to be higher than the production costs (or related reduced prices). It would be useful to reflect on the main channels to be accounted for in this respect in ensuring a better accounting of the actual level of the value added provided by public social services. Moreover, some actual estimates of the actual added value of the provision of public social services should be provided, reflecting in a more accurate way in particular both the short term impact (such as stabilisation function on the economy) and the longer term impact. These can be related to structural positive impact on employment and incomes, or savings allowed in terms of preventing adverse impacts, such as in terms of preventing permanent adverse spells – such as health outcomes or early school leaving – or transitory periods such as unemployment or inactivity of social services provided. Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged, especially with HORIZON-CL2-2023-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-02: Towards sustainable economic policy paradigms.