Why are social enterprises thriving in the UK?

By Charlotte Ashton, BBC Radio 4, The World Tonight

Social enterprises use business methods to tackle problems in society and despite the austerity, many are thriving with twice as many reporting growth last year as conventional businesses.

Andy Bradley is selling compassion to the NHS. Dominic Boddington is selling hope for difficult pupils to schools. They both used to work in the public sector but have decided that to improve public services you need to be in business.

They have set up social enterprises – businesses that have social change for good as their primary motive rather than profit.

Frameworks 4 Change was set up by Andy Bradley to sell compassion training to healthcare providers, including the North Essex Partnership Foundation Trust, the first NHS body to commission him.

He grew up in a care home run by his parents and was shocked when he started working in the NHS himself and found not all nurses were as compassionate as his mother had been.

Free thinking

So he set about devising a training course teaching a series of habits nurses can adopt to make sure they are always compassionate, regardless of how busy they are. Nurses that are not compassionate enough should be sacked, he believes.

During the course he teaches which body language to avoid, how to listen properly and why it is important to care for your colleagues.

Andy Bradley’s ambition is to change the culture of nursing entirely and there is certainly a gap in the market for that.

Last month Prime Minister David Cameron said “the whole approach to caring in this country needs to be reset” if we want “dignity and respect” for patients.