Partners

Understanding the impact and sharing learning to tackle loneliness

1. Reducing or preventing loneliness, by enabling projects tackling loneliness to be more effective and evaluate their impact.
2. Build on our existing knowledge to better understand the most effective approaches to measure, reduce and prevent loneliness. Once complete in 2021, findings from the project will be used to improve the evidence base on loneliness. This will inform longer-term policy and funding decisions.

For grant-holders

10 tips to help your project reduce loneliness

Guidance on evaluation for grant holders

Guidance on co-design and community spaces

1. A brief introduction to co-design and why it matters
2. Top tips and tools for creating and monitoring a co-design process
3. Advice on how to evaluate co-design by reflecting on: the benefits of co-design for staff and young people; the quality of the co-design process; and insights into addressing loneliness and social isolation.

Co-design and community spaces - Final Report

More about the Fund

• music and singing
• heritage
• visual art
• sport and dance
• outdoor recreation.

• student and staff wellbeing and mental health in higher education settings
• adult and young adult learning in community, work-place, and further education settings - you can also read more about adult learning below.

• Wellbeing evidence at the heart of policy
• Joint decision-making
• Using local indicators to improve local areas
• Supporting local authorities on strategies for improving wellbeing

Making wellbeing improvement cost-effective

Culture and sport

• Sport, dance and young people
• Music, singing and wellbeing, including findings for young people

 

Employment transitions

• Finding and keeping work impact of wellbeing
• Unemployement and (re)employement
• Careers: what’s wellbeing like in different jobs?

 

Mental health treatment, early intervention

From the Centre

• Visual arts for mental health
• Music & Singing for those with diagnosed conditions

From other sources:

• Social & Emotional Skills for life and work (Early Intervention Foundation)
• Mental health and wellbeing guidelines (NICE)

 

Staff wellbeing

From the Centre:

• Overview employee wellbeing
• Wellbeing learning at work
• Team working/social connection at work
• Belonging at work and resilient organisations
• Retirement
• Job quality
• What is a good job?

From other sources:

• CIPD UK working lives job quality analysis
• Mindfulness at work evidence

 

Learning

Evidence from the Centre:

• Adult learning
• Wellbeing benefits of job related learning

Evidence from other sources:

• Apprenticeships – evidence informed guidance on take up and completion of apprenticeships (What Works for Local Growth)
• Employment training programmes – what to include for them to be effective and how to get high take up and completion (What Works Centre for Local Growth)
• Post 16 English & Maths attainment (Early Education Foundation)

• The higher our income the less influence an increase has on our wellbeing and we get used to increases (we adapt). For example, £10 makes a much bigger difference to someone on minimum wage compared to someone already earning £35,000 a year.  This means we need to balance with other sources of wellbeing.
• We feel loses more than gains - You lose more wellbeing from a fall in income than you gain in wellbeing from an equal rise in income.
• Our perception of other people’s wealth, relative to our own, makes a difference to how we rate our wellbeing.
• Expenditure has a greater impact than level of income alone.
• There is no clear relation between average rate of economic growth and average employment rate. It is clear that unemployment has surprisingly big impacts on wellbeing, similar to that of bereavement and larger than can be explained by loss of income alone; and that we do not adapt, or get used to, being unemployed.

• Having someone to rely on in times of trouble is the top driver of difference between high and low wellbeing countries.
• Our partner relationship is the second biggest driver of overall life satisfaction. 

Loneliness and wellbeing

Loneliness and social isolation

• Visual arts and mental heath
• Wellbeing training in healthcare settings
• Finding and keeping work
• Sport and dance for young people
• Teen mental health and educational attainment
• Student mental health

• community wellbeing
• community spaces and infrastructure
• social relations
• loneliness and social isolation
• heritage
• housing
• culture, arts, and sport
• inequalities in wellbeing, and the drivers of wellbeing inequalities
• using locally available data to improve wellbeing

• loneliness and social isolation
• places and community
• work
• culture, arts and sport
• education and learning.

What do we know?

What will we do?

What is social prescribing?

Evidence-informed models

PERMA Plus

• Sleep
• Nutrition (five vegetables and two fruits a day)
• Physical activity
• Optimism

Five Ways to Wellbeing

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Keep learning
• Give

10 Keys to Happier Living

Other useful resources for social prescribing

The Health Foundation – What makes us healthy

C3 Collaborating for Health

• improving what we eat and drink
• stopping smoking
• increasing physical activity

Wellbeing outcome measurement

INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOPS: UNDERSTANDING, IMPROVING AND MEASURING WELLBEING

• work for a small or medium-sized charity or social enterprise
• want to understand if and how your activities affect the wellbeing of the people you support
• are responsible for reporting, evaluation or impact
• have not measured wellbeing very much or at all yet and need some guidance on how to get started.

ADVANCED WORKSHOP: DESIGNING AND PREPARING FOR EVALUATION

• are familiar with evaluation frameworks and concepts
• have dedicated Monitoring and Evaluation, or Learning and Insights, teams who are keen to improve their understanding of wellbeing evaluation frameworks and methodologies
• have already conducted or are planning to conduct a wellbeing evaluation

Upcoming workshops

• What are the wellbeing impacts of volunteering, and does it affect different populations differently?
• What are the key mechanisms by which wellbeing outcomes are achieved for volunteers, and are these generalisable across different contexts and people?
• What types of volunteering are particularly associated with wellbeing outcomes?
• What are the barriers or enablers to improving wellbeing through volunteering?

• a workplace wellbeing questionnaire
• job quality
• unemployment and (re)employment
• transitions from education to work
• learning and training
• gender and employment
• progression and job security
• finding and keeping work
• belonging at work and organisational resilience
• team working