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[name] => Building Connections Fund: Evaluation and Learning
[slug] => building-connections
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[description] => Understanding the impact and sharing learning to tackle loneliness
The £11.5m Fund which is a partnership between Government, The National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation is providing grants to 126 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations between 2019 and 2021. To evaluate and share learning from the Fund, we are working with New Philanthropy Capital, Centre for Youth Impact, Brunel University London, Bryson Purdon Social Research, and expert David Pritchard. The work will be carried out with groups of all ages and backgrounds across England.
Reducing or preventing loneliness, by enabling projects tackling loneliness to be more effective and evaluate their impact.
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.
The resources and findings on this page are created and maintained by our partners New Philanthropy Capital.
If you are a Building Connections Fund grant-holder and have any enquiries, please email: BCFevaluation@thinknpc.org
For grant-holders
You can find resources to support your work in the tabs below, including our guidance on measuring loneliness. Building Connections grant-holders will also be able to register for upcoming events, sign up for workshops or webinars and receive the latest learning from the programme.
You can also sign up to the Centre’s weekly evidence alerts below to read the latest wellbeing evidence and insight. It’s not just for Fund grant-holders; anyone can subscribe!
10 tips to help your project reduce loneliness
Download
This paper brings together emerging findings from the existing evidence to offer practical help to Building Connections Fund grant holders and other projects working on reducing loneliness.
These tips focus on how services are delivered, rather than what they deliver. The aim is to help you plan and implement projects so that they work more effectively to reduce loneliness.
As many of your activities are already underway, these tips focus on opportunities to incorporate best practice. The diversity of types of loneliness, types of interventions, target beneficiaries and locations are such that there will never be a one-size-fits-all approach to fighting loneliness. Here, we draw out promising factors, mechanisms and approaches that make existing interventions more likely to be effective. As some tips emphasise, approaches should be personalised and localised to tackle loneliness.
Therefore, these tips should be taken as ideas to explore, rather than as a prescriptive checklist.
Guidance on evaluation for grant holders
Download
This guide brings together NPC’s pioneering impact practice resources to offer practical guidance to Building Connections Fund Grant Holders and others working on reducing loneliness. It is designed to complement the What Works Centre for Wellbeing’s guidance A Brief Guide to measuring loneliness.
We need to understand more about the factors associated with loneliness, what the effects of loneliness are for different people and how we can prevent or alleviate it. Currently, there is limited evidence on loneliness. We have some data on loneliness in older people, but less for other age groups including children and young people. This guidance is designed to help you evaluate your activities tackling loneliness and improve the sector’s understanding of what works. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of impact measurement or evaluation.
Evaluation is about asking and answering some of the most fundamental questions: Are we making a difference? How can we improve? Are we reaching the right people? How does our programme lead to change? It is about developing an approach to learning about what changes occur, how change happens, and what causes change.
Please note that though this guide will help you collect data for your project, Building Connections Grant Holders who are chosen to take part in our smaller evaluation cohorts will be given extra support by NPC.
This document has been produced for Building Connections Fund grant-holders but can be applied to any activities aimed at reducing loneliness.
This guidance consists of three sections:
Section 1 outlines the national measures of loneliness. All organisations working on tackling loneliness should consider if they can use these to evaluate their work.
Section 2 takes you through five steps for developing and implementing a measurement framework for evaluating your work.
Section 3 offers practical advice for using different approaches and methods for data collection and analysis. It also outlines key evaluation considerations relating to research ethics and data protection.
Guidance on co-design and community spaces
Download
This document offers practical guidance on co-design, evaluation of co-design and evaluation of community spaces. It includes an introduction to co-design and why it matters, top tips and tools for creating and monitoring a co-design process, and advice on how to evaluate it.
We need to understand more about loneliness: the factors associated with it, the effects it has on different people, and how we can prevent or alleviate it. Currently, the evidence base is very limited – we have some data on loneliness in older people, but less for other age groups (including children and young people).
This document offers guidance on co-design, evaluation of co-design and evaluation of community spaces. It includes three main sections:
A brief introduction to co-design and why it matters
Top tips and tools for creating and monitoring a co-design process
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.
This guidance was developed for the Building Connections Fund grant-holders who are working specifically on co-design and community spaces, but can be used by any organisation looking to design or improve its co-design process. It builds on the Guidance on Evaluation for Building Connections Fund Grant-holders, which offers practical guidance for understanding evaluation and evaluating your activities.
Co-design and community spaces - Final Report
NPC has conducted a qualitative evaluation of these projects to better understand the role of co-design and community spaces in reducing loneliness for young people.
Visit their website to download the report
Tips to help your remote project tackle loneliness
Read the blog
Continually testing, gathering feedback, and implementing changes is the best way to adapt during extreme circumstances.
The pandemic has taught us that continuous learning is key to adapting services to prevent or reduce loneliness during times of change. It’s likely that charities will continue to offer a hybrid of remote and in-person services for many years to come, so it’s vital that the lessons learnt from Covid-19 are not forgotten.
Our tips to help your remote project tackle loneliness draws upon a developmental evaluation of the Building Connections Fund, the first ever cross government fund dedicated to reducing loneliness in England, delivered in partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation. NPC supported grant holders by sharing emerging good practice for addressing changing needs and rules throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
The big lessons learnt by grant holders through the Covid-19 pandemic were to:
Help service users increase their engagement with online activities and offer choice to meet different service users’ needs.
Ensure support is consistent and reliable, with healthy relationships between staff and users and regular support to create trust and reassurance.
Work together with local organisations to avoid duplication.
Put appropriate safeguarding and privacy measures in place.
Respond to changing user needs during different lockdowns or social distancing restrictions.
Covid-19 has forced charities to innovate faster than ever before. We hope that by publishing these tips for running a remote project to tackle loneliness we can help the many charities tackling similar challenges to build on these lessons, both now and in the future.
Visit their website to download the tips
Reflections from the Building Connections Fund developmental evaluation
Launched in December 2018, the Building Connections Fund (BCF) was the first ever cross government fund dedicated to reducing loneliness in England. In partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation, £11.5m was awarded to 126 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations working with different groups across England. NPC was commissioned by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as the evaluation and learning partner.
The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted the original BCF evaluation so from April 2020 we adopted a developmental evaluation approach to capture and share learning.
This document draws on a series of interactive workshops with funders, grant holders and NPC
staff to reflect on lessons from this evaluation. We’ve written this for people undertaking or planning evaluations in a crisis. Through sharing our experiences, we hope to contribute to the important, on-going conversation about how to evaluate in fast moving situations.
Visit their website to download the report
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[name] => Business Leaders' Council
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[description] => Contact Business Lead Eileen Donnelly at eileen.donnelly@whatworkswellbeing.org to find out more about becoming a member of the Business Leaders' Council.
The Centre's Business Leaders' Council brings together a small and carefully selected number of non-competing stakeholders from the business sector who are not only demonstrating an ongoing commitment to wellbeing within their own workplace, but who are considering wellbeing in their supply chains, of their consumers and within society more broadly.
The Council, aided by a group of leading academics and with access to direct relationships across several government departments, will help to define the problems, scope the offer and implementation needs of private sector partners and support the development of the Centre’s expertise and delivery in this area of work.
We also seek to identify opportunities to pool resources and expertise to find solutions you can individually and/or collectively implement, applying evidence-based methods at scale.
The Centre’s team and its work are evolving and expanding. We are developing ambitious plans and programmes for next year that we would like you and your business to be a part of. It is an exciting time to contribute to and be a part of the Centre’s future.
Watch the Business Leaders' Council webinars
What works for supporting employee mental health? October 2021
How can businesses put wellbeing into the 'S' of ESG? (Blog) September 2021
Why financial wellbeing matters at work June 2021
Good work for wellbeing in the Coronavirus economy February 2021
Why is employee wellbeing so important? December 2020
How can we support the wellbeing of staff returning from furlough? October 2020
Business Leader benefits
Engage with other leaders in non-competitive sectors, research academics and government on the subject of wellbeing.
Help shape the agenda for research and policy on wellbeing, addressing all key drivers of wellbeing, not only of employees but also of customers and the communities in which businesses operate.
Attend and contribute to the development of content for the All Party Parliamentary Group Wellbeing Economics.
Attend, contribute and be named supporters of the Centre’s new evidence briefings (at no extra cost).
Gain insight from academia into emerging workplace research and its relevance and have access to pre-publication findings from Centre projects.
Access further sponsorship opportunities of new Centre publications and thereby benefit from enhanced reputation, corporate branding, associated position of thought leadership and input into any subsequent events related to the reports.
Be profiled as practice examples and feature in guest blogs on the Centre’s website through blogs.
Discuss the development of new and bespoke projects tailored to your business needs that also align with the Centre’s mission and further businesses’ and society’s understanding of wellbeing.
Take advantage of pilot schemes to test implementation of wellbeing interventions to gain evidence and new insight into what works.
Access support from the Centre to advise on evaluation methods for wellbeing interventions in your business.
Receive briefings on developments in wellbeing public policy
Offer potential for collaboration with academics, other companies and funders.
Meet regularly through the year with information exchanged electronically between meetings.
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[name] => Carers' Music Fund
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[description] => The Centre is the learning evaluation partner for the Spirit of 2012 Carers' Music Fund. Our role is to support grantees in measuring the impact of their interventions. We will also research how the Fund impacts carers’ wellbeing and feelings of loneliness.
Read the first insight report in the series - When we sing it sounds like there are more of us: Findings from the first cohort of the Carer’s Music Fund
See how projects are sustaining a wellbeing focus through the pandemic
Listen to the podcast: Singing hurries along friendship: a Carers’ Music Fund insights podcast
The final evaluation report will be published by Spirit of 2012 on 23 June 2021, alongside their Carers' Music Fund summit (register here).
Our final reflections document looks at some of the key insights from our partnership working and findings from the programme-level evaluation.
More about the Fund
The Carers’ Music Fund targets women and girls who are isolated because of their caring responsibilities. The 10 projects will engage them in music activities with the aim of reducing loneliness, improving their mental health and wellbeing.
The ten projects – seven of which are in England, with one each in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – vary hugely in their approaches to engaging female carers. In Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), through partnerships with Midland Mencap and Quench Arts, will engage with a range of existing groups who focus on areas such as mental health, disability and specific cultural communities, while also trying to reach those who may not consider themselves to be carers.
Loneliness among carers is extremely high: 8 in 10 say they are socially isolated because of their caring responsibilities, and according to ONS figures carers are 22% more likely to experience mental ill health than the general population.
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[term_id] => 94
[name] => Covid-19
[slug] => covid
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[description] => Covid-19, wellbeing and inequalities - what the evidence tells us
Although the whole of the UK has been affected by Covid-19 and its social and economic consequences, the impact has been different for different people.
In order to support a wellbeing-centred recovery, we need to understand how impacts have been felt across the population, including how the key factors that drive wellbeing have been affected.
We need to make use of academic research, surveys and evidence from across sectors to build a picture of who has been affected by the pandemic and in what ways.
Build your own briefing for your context:
Covid:WIRED: Wellbeing Inequalities Research and Evidence Dashboard
Read our briefings:
The impact of the pandemic on subjective wellbeing inequalities
Covid-19 and wellbeing inequalities: Housing
Covid-19 and wellbeing inequalities: Employment and income
Read our analysis:
What matters for our sense of purpose?
What helped the UK cope with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns?
How has Covid-19 - and the associated lockdown measures - affected mental health and wellbeing in the UK?
How has Covid-19 affected loneliness?
Analysis of ONS Annual Population Survey before and during the pandemic:
Wellbeing and employment
Wellbeing of men and women in the UK
Wellbeing and age
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[name] => Covid:WIRED
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[description] => Covid:WIRED - The Covid Wellbeing Inequalities Research Evidence Dashboard
Covid:WIRED* is a database of studies that identifies what aspects of life have been affected by the pandemic, as well as which individuals have been most impacted by these changes.
Our new and unique online dashboard brings together emerging research on the impact of the pandemic on different populations and on different outcomes - starting with subjective wellbeing and its six drivers:
Health
What we do
Relationships
Money
Where we live
Education
The dashboard is a collection of over 400 findings from research that have been organised with wellbeing domains on the vertical axis and dimension of inequality along the horizontal axis.
You can search by domain, inequality dimension, or filter the results by study design and whether the evidence suggests the wellbeing change was positive or negative, or widened or narrowed existing wellbeing inequalities.
Covid:WIRED - Explore the data
Watch the step by step guide to get the most out of the dashboard.
You can access the data behind the dashboard here, and submit your research for future versions of the tool by filling out this form.
*Developed by Deborah Hardoon, Ingrid Abreu-Scherer, Rosie Maguire, Saamah Abdallah, Sam Wren-Lewis, Liz Zeidler, Lisa Muller, Melissa Cairns, Joanne Smithson and Nancy Hey - in partnership with Centre for Thriving Places.
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[name] => Culture, arts and sport
[slug] => culture-arts-and-sport
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[description] => Spending our leisure time doing things we enjoy may be good for our wellbeing. But when it comes to carrying out projects and programmes to improve wellbeing, what works to make the biggest wellbeing impact? Do all interventions work for everyone, and under what conditions?
The Centre has carried out evidence reviews on the wellbeing impact of :
music and singing
heritage
visual art
sport and dance
outdoor recreation.
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[name] => Data and analysis
[slug] => data-and-analysis
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[description] => Where to find and create wellbeing data?
UK Wellbeing Framework
Sources of wellbeing data - which surveys the ONS4 are in
Local Area Wellbeing Indicators
Clustering local authorities against subnational indicators, England
Thriving Places Index
Map of wellbeing inequality across Great Britain 2017
How to create and use your own wellbeing data
Using ONS4 in your survey
Measure your wellbeing impact
Workplace wellbeing snapshot survey and question bank
Wellbeing policy tools for decision-makers
What analysis has been done?
Analysis of ONS4
Improve wellbeing with data infrastructure: seven actions for organisations
Culture and sport
Music and singing
Sport and dance
Visual arts
Outdoor recreation
Analysis in these topics are often most usefully use experiential measures of wellbeing. Time Use surveys are also useful for this area. Using this approach is helpful for improving time use for better wellbeing, and understanding how you improve positive mood or purpose
See more in Prof Paul Dolan's Definitions and measures discussion paper.
It takes a similar approach to Mappiness data and papers or this Happy Place practice example.
Work and learning
Educational outcomes
Education to employment
Adult learning
Job-related learning
Job changes
Gender and employment
What is a good job?
Life course analysis and cost effectiveness
With LSE Centre for Economic Performance.
Origins of happiness
Policy tools: wellbeing impacts and value for money - an online course
Community
Measuring wellbeing inequality across Britain
Drivers of wellbeing inequality
Social fragmentation and social deprivation
Thriving Places
Community wellbeing spillover effect of violent crime
For further reading on data and analysis, explore our blogs:
Happy people wear seatbelts - even if you’re more interested in outcomes such as, say, reducing deaths in road traffic accidents, wellbeing findings have something to offer and sometimes they’re not so obvious.
What the hidden happiness gap tells us about wellbeing inequalities in the UK - wellbeing data tells us how people actually feel about their lives, whether they are thriving or struggling. Using existing data about health, employment, education, crime and relationships – our wellbeing – in new ways, could help us explain everything from why we voted to leave the EU to what makes us trust our neighbours.
What do we know about the drivers of wellbeing inequality? Looking at inequality of wellbeing is a new and emerging approach to understanding how people and communities are thriving or struggling. But while it’s harder to find and understand what differences exist within and between populations, and what might drive such otherwise hidden variations, we think it could lead to some insightful findings.
All the Centre's blogs and guest blogs on the UK wellbeing data using the Office for National Statistics data. You will also find related data, indices, and analyses from other organisations.
How is the UK, as a whole, doing? This blog from Deborah Hardoon, our Head of Evidence, looks at the UK's performance in relation to other countries in the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
How did a major event like Brexit impact wellbeing? In 2017, we shared how personal wellbeing fared in the year following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union (EU).
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[name] => Early evidence of Covid-19 inequalities
[slug] => how-different-groups-affected-by-covid-19
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[description] => Covid-19: how can Local Authorities use emerging evidence to address wellbeing inequalities?
In Autumn 2020 we brought together emerging evidence about wellbeing inequalities in a series of 8 email briefings for Local Authority policy makers. This evidence was collected through a crowdsourcing exercise, and presented the early findings about the effects of the pandemic in its first 6 months.
You can find the Autumn 2020 evidence briefings below, or you can search the updated evidence in our Covid-WIRED dashboard.
Early evidence of wellbeing inequalities:
Different relationships
Different ethnicities
Mental health
Men and women
Children and young people
Financial wellbeing
Work-related wellbeing
Bringing all the data together
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[name] => Education and learning
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[description] => There are 1.9 million adults enrolled in further education colleges, and 2.34 million students studying at UK higher education institutions, according to Association of Colleges and HESA. And thousands of employees in the UK participate in work-based training and development courses each year.
Our evidence reviews, practice maps, and data analysis have focussed on:
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
We have also created specific guidance for measuring and improving staff wellbeing within schools and colleges.
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[name] => Employee wellbeing snapshot survey
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[description] => What gets measured, gets managed.
So that you can support your workforce in the ways that are the most useful to them at this time, we recommend that you regularly ask your employees how they are doing.
We have developed this suggested set of questions in collaboration with The Department for Work and Pensions, to give a quick snapshot of how people are doing with respect to different aspects of wellbeing.
Collecting this data at regular intervals will help you to identify individuals and groups who are at risk of low wellbeing, as well as specific aspects of work (physical hazards) or aspects of wellbeing (mental health) which could be improved with well-designed interventions.
Find out how your survey results compare to these benchmarks.
Download the methodology paper for the questionnaire
The recommended questions and scales
We have created a google form template that you can use to conduct your own survey.
Alternatively, a word version of the questionnaire is available to download and use.
For each of these questions I’d like you to give an answer on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “completely”...
Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
Recommended response scale
0 (Not at all) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (completely)
Building Connections Fund: Evaluation and Learning
Business Leaders' Council
Carers' Music Fund
Covid-19
Covid:WIRED
Culture, arts and sport
Data and analysis
Early evidence of Covid-19 inequalities
Education and learning
Employee wellbeing snapshot survey
Environment
Government and public policy
Guidance for better workplace wellbeing
Higher education: student and staff wellbeing and mental health
HMT Green Book Appraisal Guidance
Improving use of wellbeing in research and practice - Methods Series
Income and economy
Joint decision making, co-production and democracy
Knowledge use & implementation
Loneliness
Maximise your local area wellbeing
Measuring children's subjective wellbeing
Measuring wellbeing
Mental and physical health
National wellbeing measures and methods
ONS data analysis
Places and community
Policy tools
Social prescribing models and resources
Teens and young adults: loneliness and wellbeing
Understanding social isolation and loneliness at different ages
Volunteering
Wellbeing economics and analysis
Work
Work and Covid-19
Work and terminal illness
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