Green Communicators NW Meeting

Date: Wednesday 17^th August 2011

Organised by: The Environment Agency NW

Venue: The Barn, Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester & North Merseyside, Preston

Post by: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer

Yesterday I attended the quarterly meeting of the Green Communicators Group, chaired by the Environment Agency NW. These meetings are great networking and learning opportunities for anyone working in communications for a third or public sector organisation in the North West, related in anyway to the environment.

This time the meeting was held at the Wildlife Trust’s office at Cuerden Valley Park, Preston, and the attendees were rather thin on the ground, probably due to the holiday season and some confusion over the venue, but otherwise it was a great meeting. I used this opportunity to flag up some of the heath and wellbeing benefits of projects that are involved with the environment, such as Target: Wellbeing’s Great Outdoors and Offshoots, as well as to let the group know about the tools we’ve been developing with the North West Public Health Observatory to evaluate the health and wellbeing benefits of projects of these kind.

Ben O’Brien, Director of Health & Society for the communications consultancy Kenyon Fraser had been invited to address the group and gave a very interesting presentation on Social Media. I’m always rather dubious when I see Social Media on an agenda, as it’s been the “hot topic” at meetings like these for about four years, and the conversation usually revolves around everyone saying you should do it, with very little discussion about how to do it, let alone, how to do it well! Paul’s presentation was great though, with tonnes of personal experience and some great examples of digital campaigns that have worked, such as Barnardos’ The Teens Speech and the RLNI’s Mystery Package.

Paul’s presentation also touched on Cause Related Marketing, which was a new term to me, though I’ve been aware of the growing trend for corporate organisations to use charities or green themes to help their brand gain a more positive slant, or in more extreme examples to “Green Wash”. An interesting discussion followed about the dangers for charities of accepting funding from corporate organisations with dubious motivations or activities, and where you draw the line. Some in the room felt this was a growing risk for organisations that are having to turn more and more to fundraising from the private sector as other funding pots have been cut.

Next the Environment Agency team told us about the Think Digital element of their internal CPD programme, which is, I think rather brilliantly, training non-comms people, as well as those for whom comms is the main part of their job, not only the logistics of Social Media, but also why it’s important and the different ways it can be used, for example for consultation or to engage with a specific community. This was really interesting for me, and I’m sure anyone who’s tried to engage their colleagues with creating Social Media content, which in my experience always results in a rather mixed bag!

Olivia Assheton also brought up next year’s Diamond Jubilee, which will give us an extra bank holiday over the weekend of 2^nd to 5^th June 2012. Everyone has got their thinking caps on as this provides a great opportunity for events.

Finally, some discussion was had about how to develop the group, extend the network, get new members and make it as useful for everyone involved as possible, so if you’d like to attend a future meeting contact Katy Barton at katy.barton@environment-agency.gov.uk

Greener On the Outside (Prisons) Board Meeting

Date: Monday 8^th August 2011
Organised by: UCLan
Venue: UCLan, Preston
Post by: Lawrence Milner, Programme Officer

On Monday I attended the “Greener On the Outside” (Prisons) (GOOP) Project Board Meeting in Preston, chaired by Michelle Baybutt the Programme Lead for the Target: Wellbeing Prisons Programme.

“GOOP” is one of the three projects that make up our Pan-Regional Prisons Programme and provides opportunities for offenders to participate in environmental projects. As well as provide opportunities to improve their health, the project also gives prisoners the opportunity to develop their portfolio of transferable skills, gain work experience and contribute to the improvement of the local environment.

Reflecting the needs of different types of institutions and categories of prisoner, a wide range of activities have been taking place through the project such as growing flowers and vegetables within prison grounds, maintenance work out in the Community such as at Beacon Fell Country Park and distribution of community grow boxes. The work at HMP/ YOI Styal is due to feature in the August edition of the Royal Horticultural Society’s August 2011 newsletter.

As the Target: Wellbeing Portfolio begins to draw to a close, work is taking place to ensure the future sustainability of projects. Building on the success of the current project, which has seen a number of prisoners use the skills learnt through GOOP to go on to grounds maintenance related professions on their release, UCLan are looking for potential opportunities to develop an exciting new Prison Training and Employment programme.

You can read more about the Prisons Programme here:
http://www.targetwellbeing.org.uk/profile/prisons

Target: Wellbeing Older People's Programme Event

Date of the event: Wednesday 20th April 2011
Organised by: Age UK
Venue: The Methodist Church, Penrith
Post by: Lawrence Milner, Programme Officer

On Wednesday I headed north for the Target Wellbeing: Older People Programme showcase event at the Methodist Church in Penrith.

Organised by Age UK West Cumbria, the event provided an opportunity to learn about the excellent work that is taking place within our Older People’s Programme. Graham Hodkinson, Assistant Director for Older People at Cumbria County Council opened the event and reminded us of the purpose of the programme which focuses on the delivery of care to older people. Integral to the programme is the dissemination of learning through the region and beyond and this event provided a great opportunity to do just that.

Anna Campbell, Age Concern West Cumbria, explained about the projects that encompass our Older People’s programme, including:
- Care School, which is predominantly focused on upskilling care staff with training around subjects such as dignity, nutrition and self care
- Reading Groups, which provides resources and empowers care staff to facilitate their own groups post training
- Enriched Opportunities, which provides activities for older people in care settings
- Gold Standard, which is responsible for the development of “How to Guides” and the wider evaluation and dissemination of the programme.

Following the more formal presentations it was time to get interactive! Firstly we discussed our favourite books with Anne Carruthers and Anne Steele from the Reading Groups, who gave us a taste of the project and the significant social benefit it has. Lesley Gill then provided details of the dignity training programme, part of the Care School Project. A pub style “Fruit” quiz and fruit tasting session proceeded with Jo Ward and Jo Cambridge.

After lunch it was time for a dance class with Valerie Dugdale, part of the Enriched Opportunities project, who had the room participating in a number of embarrassing dance moves! Many of the projects rely of volunteers and Jane Wrighton shared her thoughts and experiences. Next Lakeland Productions gave us a taste of their current productions and once more the room was dancing and singing songs!

Drawing to a close, David Day spoke about the qualitative interviews completed to assess the impact of the Reading Groups project. Mary Bradley then reflected on sharing learning and sustainability post funding and the need to develop marketable products before Mark Hastings wrapped up proceedings.

All in all a light hearted and enjoyable but also informative day which helped communicate the work and benefits of the Older People’s Programme.

See http://www.targetwellbeing.org.uk/profile/older_people and
http://www.ageuk.org.uk/westcumbria/Our-services/Health--wellbeing/Target-Wellbeing/ for further information about the Older People’s programme.

The Future of Well-being – A Big Lottery Fund Learning Event

Date of the event: 14th and 15th March 2011
Organised by: The Big Lottery Fund
Venue: The Royal National Institute for the Blind, Birmingham
Post by: Lawrence Milner, Programme Officer

"The Future of Well-being" was the title for Big Lottery Fund’s second learning event for grant holders of Well-being funding which took place on 14th and 15th March 2011 in Birmingham.

Following the welcomes and introductions it was straight down to business with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) updating us with the second year interim findings from the national evaluation, which will be available on the CLES wellbeing website from next week.

Next Peter Wanless, Big Lottery’s CEO, reflected on the progress of the wellbeing programme to date, before touching on other priority areas of work such as the recently launched “Improving Futures” programme. You can read Peter's blog post on the New Start magazine site about the Well-being programme's evalaution here, and there are some findings from the Well-being programmes evaluation here - Well-being in England: Making a BIG difference

Before lunch the Ramblers Association guided us on a short walk around Birmingham.

Well-being and the Big Society was the thought provoking topic introduced by Julian Dobson (Big Society in the North and co-founder of New Start magazine) when we were challenged with thinking about the positive aspects of the BIG society agenda. Next Phil Conway from Cool2Care, a rapidly expanding social enterprise, focused our minds on the future and shared his experiences of adopting a very business focused approach.

Day two was opened by Reverend Dr Alan Billings (England Committee, Big Lottery) who talked about some of the challenges faced by the voluntary and community sector in light of government funding cutbacks and the resultant increased competition for lottery resources. Victoria Bradford informed us about wellbeing policy updates before the Office for National Statistics explained on how there were developing new measures for well-being further details of which can be found at www.ons.gov.uk/well-being

It was then onto workshops including looking at measuring and articulating “Impact” introduced by Claire Henderson involved with Mind’s Time to Change campaign and the Food for Life Partnership, led by the Soil Association, including thought on the need to communicate evaluation findings in advance of project closure to aid sustainability discussion. Finally we looked at some techniques for measuring those important softer outcomes which projects achieve such as behavioral change with Sarah Frost from the Altogether Better programme.

This was hugely relevant for Target: Wellbeing, as we have developed a complex and thorough system of evaluation over the few years our projects have been running. From evaluation questionnaires and an online registration database developed by the North West Public Health Observatory and a process evaluation led by the University of Central Lancashire, to a whole range of varied and bespoke tools used to meet the needs of the specific projects and beneficiaries. We’ll be launching several reports from a range of evaluators shortly, so if this is an area you are interested in keep an eye on the resources section of our website, and if you are keen to discuss Target: Wellbeing’s evaluation tools and systems themselves contact Rob Squires at rob.squire@groundwork.org.uk or on 0161 237 3200.

All in all a very thought provoking and enjoyable couple of days and a great chance to once again meet colleagues from other programmes and share our learning.

New Public Health Arrangements in Manchester

Date of the event: Tuesday 1st March 2011
Organised by: Manchester Aliance for Community Care (MACC)
Venue: Cross Street Chapel, Manchester
By: Rob Squires, Wellbeing Newtwork Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

"The era of full cost recovery may be over before it even began .."
~ Mike Wild

This was the response from the director of Manchester Alliance for Community Care, when I asked a question about how much resource organisations should be putting into evidencing their outcomes in order to win public health contracts.

I was at a public meeting organised by MACC, bringing together Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations with David Regan, who is the new Director for Public Health in Manchester. The purpose of the meeting was to hear first hand from Regan, about the broad changes that are happening within public health, and the implications of these on the VCS. Although there are positives to the government's white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, such as increased committment to preventative services, all this is to be achieved within the backdrop of severe funding cuts. Hence Mike's comment that whilst there is increased pressure on organisations to evidence their effectiveness, the probability that there will be a suitable budget to finance this, is slim.

Mike Wild is to sit on the new Health & Wellbeing Board for Manchester, as a representative for the VCS. The board is to be chaired by Cllr Richard Lease, leader of MCC, and amongst other things, the Board will play a role in scrutinising GP commissioning in the area. Mike is pushing the idea that there should be some kind of agreement between commissioners and the VCS about what will constitute valid evidence, and that they should be less emphasis on 'does the VCS work?', and more on 'how does it work?'.

For more information visit MACC's web site.

RSN Social Media Training in Oldham

Date fo the event: Thursday 24th February 2011, 9.30am – 1.00pm
Organised by: Target Wellbeing's Regional Support Network
Venue: Oldham Sports Centre, Lord St, Oldham, OL1 3HA
Delivered by: Rhiannon Davies, Target: Wellbeing’s Communications Officer
This post is by: Rhiannon Davies

In this session we covered how to identify the most relevant platforms for the attending organsiations' stakeholders, and how take advantage of free ways to boost their profile and communicate online.

The session covered:
• An introduction to social media (We started from the very beginning for those who didn't knwo their facebook from their elbow!)
• Social media In context - how it fits into existing marketing activity
• Picking the right tools for your objectives
• How to use the most popular platforms: Blogging, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook

It was a really lively session, with about 14 people with a huge range of experience in social media, from those on the verge of creating their first social media strategy to those who were just starting to think about dipping their toes in the water by setting up a YouTube or Twitter account.

I've led this session a few times over the last few years and it's really interesting to see the numbers of people signing up swelling each time. Clearly more and more organsiations are getting excited about how they can use social media to engage with their beneficiaries or funders, or is it that they're just starting to realise that they can't afford to ignore social media anymore?

I've asked everyone who attended the session to leave a comment, so I hope that we'll get some feedbacka botu what they foudn most useful, and if they've actually put into action all the brilliant ideas they had during the training.

North West Health and Physical Activity Forum Conference: Innovation in Physical Activity

Date of the event: Thursday 10th February 2011
Organised by: North West Health and Physical Activity Forum
Venue: The Westleigh Conference Centre, Preston
By: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer

This incredibly energised conference that covered everything to do with Physical Activity in the North West took place in the beautiful surroundings of Westleigh conference Centre, a beautiful 19th century mansion house, and Maggie and I were pleased to see our first snow drops of the year (pictured) sprinkling the lawn!

Unusually for a conference of this kind, all the key note speakers were both interesting and relevant:

Dr Ruth Hussey, the Regional Director of Public Health kicked off the day with Physical Activity and innovation – The Regional perspective, and drew our attention to Public Health England – A new service to get people healthy, from the Department of Health, and focused on innovation in the North West, such as the sports and physical activity challenge http://www.sportandphysicalactivity.nhs.uk/ for employees of NHS healthcare establishments.

Next, Dr Harry Rutter (@harryrutter), Director of the National Obesity Observatory, won us all over with his presentation Nudge, Budge and Fudge. Referring to Thaler and Sunstein’s well known book on behaviour change, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, he talked about the governments plan to advocate encouraging or 'nudging' people to make healthier decisions for themselves. With the help of some very complex (or is it complicated?) diagrams and mind maps he succinctly conveyed that it takes more than individual interventions (e.g. changing doughnuts for biscuits at meetings, cycling instead of taking public transport) to change people, when it’s so easy to slip (rewarding yourself with double helpings of dinner), and his belief that a whole new outlook, including infrastructure to make making healthy decisions easier, is what’s needed. He was so convincing I even dusted my bike off at the weekend!

The last speaker in the morning was Denise Hampson, a Health behaviour Economist and the Managing Director of Hampson Solutions, who took a very different approach with her presentation: Why public health should be more like the best theme park in the world, and less like your local bank. Denise’s presentation was based on her popular theories (at least at the last few NWHPAF events I’ve been too!) about behaviour change, where she explains decision making as a process using the “hot” (emotional, habitual) and “cold” (logical) parts of our brain, and went on to use the extended metaphors of the experience you get at a bank (boring investments – save now and you’ll get the benefit much later) to that of going to Disney World (immediate fun and pleasure) to demonstrate why people make the health decisions they do. Leaving us with the question, “What if Walt Disney was your boss?” she raised an important question about marketing the experience of health interventions (such as the fun of playing football and the feel good factor of yoga) rather than the long term benefit. It reminded me a lot of what marketers, selling everything from cars to concert tickets, do all the time.

Next came the parallel sessions (which sandwiched a great lunch). I attended a session led by Nick Cavill (@cavilln) on the Department of Health’s forthcoming new Physical Activity guidelines. Apparently they’re going to be very similar to Canada’s, released last month. The group raised several issues with the proposed change from 5 x 30, to 150 mins a week, and the general consensus in the group seemed to be that 150 minutes might be off putting, as it sounds so much, or that people may feel their long bike ride on a Sunday might be enough. On a more positive note it was suggested that there will be specific guidelines available for early years, children and older people for the first time. I also went to a fun and interesting session on how music can increase your performance while exercising, and I know Maggie loved being top of the scoreboard for the session on Street Soccer by Play Innovation (see the video to see how it works).

As I’m a bit of a Social Media advocate myself, I was also really pleased that the use of Twitter was encouraged throughout the day. You can look back on the conversation by using the #nwhpaf hashtag, with lots of input from @nwhpaf @harryrutter @cavilln @denisehampson @Playinnovation @Human_Kinetics and of course, @targetwellbeing

All in all it was a very worth while day and we were very grateful to the NWHPAF and Events Northern team for organising it!