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.