The Local Wellbeing Project

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The Local Wellbeing Project

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The project

• Aims
• 1 To explore how local government intervention in
  key areas can increase happiness and wellbeing
• 2 To establish the value to local government of
  prioritising happiness and wellbeing in service
  delivery and strategic planning
• 3 To develop replicable practice to maximise
  happiness in the delivery of services under five
  themes
• 4 To establish robust and cost effective ways of
  measuring happiness at local level.

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The rationale

• Happiness and wellbeing underpin individuals
  ability to prosper
• But stress, misery, anxiety are all increasing
• one in six adults of working age have a mental
  illness
• a third of school pupils in England and Wales are
  bullied
• about 5 million workers experience stress half a
  million believe it makes them ill
• The majority of factors affecting happiness
  that can be controlled by external intervention
  are local
• The majority of interventions that could increase
  happiness are under the direct or strategic
  control of local authorities

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Project partners

• Young Foundation
• LSE Centre for Economic Performance
• IDeA
• South Tyneside MBC
• Manchester CC
• Hertfordshire CC
• central government stakeholders

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• South Tyneside Council and its partners the
  Police, Primary
• Care Trust, College and Jobcentre amongst others,
  have
• agreed to place wellbeing at the heart of our
  Local Area
• Agreement. We have ambitious plans to improve all
  aspects of
• life in South Tyneside from employment, health
  and crime to
• housing, environment and education. Whilst all
  our priorities
• contribute to improving the wellbeing of
  communities, families
• and individuals, we have ashared ambition to do
  those extra
• things that directly make a difference and
  enhance peoples
• lives. To achieve this we are focusing on
  initiativesthat will
• make a direct impact on self esteem andsense of
  belonging

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• Guaranteed apprenticeships links to helping
  people into jobs and encouraging enterprise
• Emotional resilience links to helping every child
  and young person achieve their potential
• Positive parenting and resilience links to making
  communities safer stronger and helping every
  child young person achieve their potential
• Neighbourhood working links to making communities
  safer and stronger
• Reducing financial exclusion links to making
  communities safer and stronger and helping people
  into jobs and encouraging enterprise
• Reducing depression and anxiety links to helping
  people live independent and healthy lives
• Reducing isolation of older people links to
  helping people live independent and healthy
  lives
• Sense of Place links to building sustainable
  neighbourhoods with great housing and transport
  links

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Manchester City Councils Community Strategy
aims to increase material prosperity and
wellbeing so that Manchesters people become
wealthier and live longer, healthier and happier
lives. The intention is to deliver this by
enabling individuals to reach their full
potential through education and employment by
creating neighbourhoods of choice so that people
will choose to stay in Manchester and by
increasing individual and collective self esteem
and mutual respect.
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Hertfordshire have located their wellbeing work
within the context of their children and young
peoples services, with a particular focus on
targeting those who have been left out of the
Countys overall prosperity. The County aims to
develop an approach ranging from universal
initiatives to encourage better mental and
physical wellbeing to specific interventions
targeting the most excluded groups including
black and minority ethnic and white working class
boys, and girls in local authority care.
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Local Wellbeing Project Linked to Hertfordshire
Priorities
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The Local Wellbeing Project core themes

• Parenting support
• Promoting emotional resilience among 11 to 13
  year olds
• Young peoples progress through to 16 to 19
  transition
• Reducing the isolation of older people
• Neighbourhood and community wellbeing
• PLUS a new underpinning strand on measurement

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The process of developing each strand

• Meetings with external experts to get ideas for
  possible promising interventions that build on
  what is known about impact
• Meetings with practitioners to understand what is
  happening in each LA and what is planned
• Negotiations with all three LAs to agree
  programme which
• partner LAs will support and resource
• we believe has a good chance of increasing
  wellbeing
• has enough common elements to enable impact to be
  assessed
• to be completed by April 2007

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Older people and wellbeing?
Ageing and mental health?

• Age Concern and Mental Health Foundation inquiry
  into mental
• health and wellbeing in later life concluded
• depression is the most common mental health
  problem in later life
• there are up to 2.4 million older people with
  depression that impairs quality of life
• demographic changes mean this number will
  increase to over 3 million over the next 15 years
• mental health problems are not a normal and
  inevitable part of the ageing process, the
  majority of older people enjoy good mental health
  and make valuable contributions to society.

• . and wellbeing?
• large survey data suggests that the average
  well-being score for the over 50s age group was
  similar to that for the under 50s
• this masks differences within the over 50s age
  group, with the over 80s having lower well-being
  scores compared to the rest of the population.
• Source DWP using data from English Longitudinal
  Study of Ageing and British household panel
  survey.

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Age Concern and the Mental Health Foundation
identified five areas key to older peoples
mental health and wellbeing 1 Age
discrimination 2 Participation 3
Relationships 4 Physical health mental
health 5 Poverty
Prevalence of problems? - nearly two
million older people in the UK live in poverty
- social isolation is experienced by one
million older people in the UK.
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Wellbeing and social exclusion?
Characteristics of older people that increase the
odds of multi- dimensional exclusion
- exclusion on three or more dimensions
Depression is the single factor with the highest
influence over different dimensions
Source SEU 2006
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Changing needs trends which impact on wellbeing

• Older people becoming increasingly diverse
• Older people becoming more affluent
• Narrowing gender gap in mortality means fewer
  people will be living alone
• Household projections show growing trend towards
  living alone amongst older people
• Women more likely to be childless

• BABYBOOMERS
• Claim to belong to fewer social networks
• Have less meaningful social attachments
• Less interested in/less sense of belonging to
  their
• neighbourhoods
• Less attached to their geographic communities
• Less eager than older generations to
  participate in
• voluntary work.

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What are local authorities doing?

• One review of LAA targets suggested that most
  LAAs focus on health, participation and improving
  independence, rather than wellbeing.

Some examples Harrow promotion of
inter-generational
relationships linked to community cohesion St
Helens proportion of over 55s attending pre-
retirement activities reporting increases in
health or wellbeing County Durham
indicators include percentage of older
people accessing social activities
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Our questions

• Where is there evidence that services for older
  people have led to increased wellbeing?
• What are the most promising ways of increasing
  wellbeing, is it reducing isolation, alleviating
  anxiety or other measures?
• How do we take account of the experience of
  different groups and design interventions that
  are sensitive to these?
• 3. What approaches could we test or pilot with
  our three partner local authorities?