Our £160 million Well-being programme aims to improve the well-being of groups who experience high levels of need. By 'well-being' we mean not just an absence of ill health but also positive mental health, good physical health and good eating habits, as well as strong social networks.
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and the New Economics Foundation (nef) are evaluating the impact of the programme in order to see whether and how it is making a difference to the thousands of people taking part in the projects we have funded.
An important part of the evaluation involves measuring a person's well-being when they first visit a project, doing so again when they leave the project and finally repeating the measurement three months after that. What this will show us is the type of effect that different projects have on people's well-being over time.
Main findings from the Year 4 (third) evaluation report include:
- People are eating more healthily. The number of participants who report eating their five a day has gone up.
People are more active and undertaking exercise on a regular basis. Participants have also said that they are enjoying exercising more.
- People are feeling happier: fewer adults are reporting depressive symptoms. This change is even more marked amomg participantts aged 65 and over.
- People are more satisfied with life: there has been a significant increase in life satisfaction scores among adults – from 6.3 to 7 on a 10-point scale.
- More people are taking part in activities in their local area and feeling they belong to their neighbourhood – an extra social benefit of the programme.
All 17 portfolios that have managed the projects have also evaluated their work.
Earlier evaluation reports:
Well-being policy papers:
Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.