Wellbeing approach to policy: share your experience

Are you a policy maker working in local government? Have you successfully used a wellbeing approach to shape council policy? If so, please share your experience and help us deepen our understanding of what works well and identify the processes that make it possible.

What is happening?

The What Works Centre for Wellbeing Local Government and Health programme supports local government and their partners to place wellbeing evidence at the heart of policy, practice and evaluation. We are designing resources for wellbeing policy makers and providing opportunities for collaboration and learning –we’d love to hear your experiences.

Criteria for participation

We will carry out interviews (telephone or online) with policy makers who have experience of one or more of the following areas:

• developing and introducing a wellbeing performance framework for all or part of a council
• developing and securing adoption of a policy/strategy to promote wellbeing for all or part of a council
• measuring the wellbeing of individuals and/or communities
• generating evidence of what work works to improve wellbeing
• using evidence of what works to improve wellbeing to shape council policy
• carrying out wellbeing needs and/or wellbeing impact assessments
• assessing wellbeing cost benefit and/or cost-effectiveness.

Interviews are expected to last an hour, and will be arranged at a time to suit participants during October 2020.

Next steps

If you would like to share your experience and be interviewed as part of this research, please email Joanne Smithson, Local Government and Health Sector Lead. Joanne’s email address at the University of Teesside is at v8296635@tees.ac.uk.

Please add in the subject header: Wellbeing Policy Interview before 30th October 2020.

If you have any queries, you can also contact the Chief Investigator, Peter Raby, Senior Lecturer Research Methods, School of Health and Life Sciences, Teesside University P.Raby@tees.ac.uk.

Here is a participant information sheet that provides more detail.

We will email a summary of the research to all participants.  If you don’t want to participate, but would like to find out the results of the research, please sign up to our evidence alert.

This research is delivered in partnership with the Health Foundation (funding) and Teesside University (Joanne Smithson is carrying out the research as part of her Master’s in Public Health).

The post of Local Government and Health Sector Lead is supported by the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK.