Target: Wellbeing - Wellbeing and Third Sector Events, Training & Conferences

Green Communicators NW Meeting

2011-08-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-01T05:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-24T03:48:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-16T06:25:00.000-08:00

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!

North West Public Health Conference 2010

2010-11-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 4th and 5th November 2010
Organised by: Event North and Cumbria and Lancashire Public Health Networks
Venue: Lowood Hotel, Ambleside
By: Maggie Moody, Portfolio Manager

I was at the NW Public Health Conference on 4th and 5th November in Ambleside, followed by a lovely long weekend in a log cabin near Ullswater (and then a nasty cold), which is why I've only now got round to sharing my summary of the conference highlights.

First to say is that it was a really good event in a lovely location, well attended by a mix of people from health, local authorities and the voluntary sector which made for interesting and informed discussion and perspectives.

The highlights for me were:
- the presentation by Ruth Hussey who highlighted the positive opportunities in this time of significant change,
- Andrew Lyon who gave a lively and engaging presentation explaining "3 Horizons"
- Prof Bengt Lindstrom who talked about salutogenesis, an assets approach (although I confess that I did google salutogenesis before the presentation so I some idea what to expect!)
- Oliver James who talked about the evidence from the Human Genome Project concluding "It's the environment, stupid"!
- Steve Wyler really inspired me in his workshop too, which gave examples of community owned facilities and buildings.

Also, one of the Target: Wellbeing projects, Pre School Nutrition in Knowsley, won a NW Public Health Award - excellent!

Here's a pho to of us receiving the award, and you can see the rest of the photographs here.

You can see all of the presentations from the day here.

Big Lottery Wellbeing Portfolios in the North

2010-10-19T08:49:00.001-07:00

Date of the event: 13/10/10
Organised by: Gillian from the NW Healthy Living Network
Venue: Stockport MBC
Report by: Maggie Moody, Portfolio Manager

Rhiannon, Lawrence and I went to a meeting of the four BIG Lottery Fund funded wellbeing portfolios in the North of England last week.

Represented at the meeting were:
North West Healthy Living Network (NW),
Altogether Better (Yorks and Humberside),
New Leaf New Life (NE),
and, of course, Target: Well-being (also NW).

The opportunity to share experiences, challenges and solutions was invaluable, and the openness of the discussions and willingness to share information was very refreshing. Networking at its best!

Whilst the portfolios are all working towards the same objectives to increase physical activity, increase healthy eating and improve mental wellbeing, the diversity of the portfolios and their projects is amazing. There's also huge innovation around evaluation and communications, just to mention a couple of examples, and the Altogether Better work with Health Champions is an inspiration.

I will endeavour to highlight forthcoming events and opportunities, but I encourage you to visit their websites (links above) and sign up to their newsletters, etc. to find out more.

Listen, Value, Invest Conference

2010-10-19T07:59:00.001-07:00

Subject: Listen, Value, Invest conference
Date of event: 3 weeks ago
Organised by: VSNW
Venue: Manchester Conference Centre
Report by: Rob Squires

This conference was attended by lots of emminent people from the Voluntary and Community Sector. One of the main objectives of the day was about how the profile of the sector
can be raised in these difficult times.

During the day I gate crashed the ED's workshop, which was jammed with EDs and other gate crashers like me. The main topic of conversation was EDs expressing dismay at the "Big Society", and the various threats it presents for their organisations.

However, at the end of the day, Neil McInroy from CLES really stole the show with a very witty, relevant and ultimately optimistic presentation on the role the Voluntary and Community Sector has to play.

All the presentations from the day are available here.

Places Training Preparation Event

2010-10-19T07:56:00.003-07:00

Date of the event: 14.10.10
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing and Mark Ellison from GONW
Venue: Foxton Centre, Preston (a Target: Wellbeing project)
Report by: Nancy Brown

This session was to develop the information we need to tell the story of
the Foxton Centre for the training on place based data we're running on 22nd November.

It was a session involving local service users, volunteers, workers, and
staff to look at how the Foxton Centre has worked within the local
community.

We'll use this to provide a case study for our training in November all
about how our projects contribute to neighbourhoods and how to use data to
show this. The highlights were learning about the work in the centre and the way
people see their neighbourhood.

You can find out more on the training on the events section of our website!

Fit as a Fiddle Conference

2010-10-19T07:56:00.001-07:00

Date: 5th October 2010
Organised by: Age Concern
Venue: Burnley Football Club

A week or so ago I was lucky enough to attend the Fit as a Fiddle
Conference in Burnley. This programme, like Target: Wellbeing is funded by
the BIG Lottery Fund, and is currently in its 4th year.

It was really interesting to find out more about their projects that are helping older
people to be more active, eat healthily and to feel positive and engaged
with their community. From food tasting and cooking sessions to tai chi,
the range of activities was impressive! There was a lot of synergy with
Target: Wellbeing, and there were opportunities for me to "borrow" some
great ideas around activities and evaluation too!

Halton Celebration Event

2010-10-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

Date of Event: 8th Sept 2010
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing's Halton Programme, Halton and St Helens PCT
Venue
Report by: Lawrence Milner

Why was the event held?
A celebration event providing to find out more about Target: Wellbeing projects funded through the Halton programme. There were displays and presentations from projects, and a chance to learn first hand how people had benefited from the projects being funded. The event also included a range of useful speakers such as Debbie Dolby from Halton CVS who spoke about the challenges and opportunities of the Spending Review for the voluntary and community sector in Halton.

Who else was there?
Representatives from Target: Wellbeing Halton projects, Local Authorities, PCTs and other partner organisations.

What was the relevance for Target: Wellbeing?
The opportunity to find out how projects were making a real difference to the people and communities in Halton.

Find out more about projects taking place in Halton on our website.

Spring Into Enterprise

2010-04-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 7th April 2010
Organised by: Target Wellbeing
Venue: Rice Lane City Farm, North Liverpool
Report by: Rob Squires, Target Wellbeing Network Co-ordinator (3rd Sector)

Spring Into Enterprise is the latest Target: Wellbeing regional networking event focussing on healthy eating, which was held at Rice Lane City Farm in Liverpool, on April 7th.

The event was attended by 22 individuals from accross the region, and from a variety of different organisational types, including Target: Wellbeing projects, Liverpool and Ellesmere Port PCTs and nutritional staff from St.Helens MBC.

The main theme of the day was sustainable enterprise for food projects, including those involved in production, access, cooking and nutrition. To this end we brought in Mark Simmonds and Ruth Kelly from Making Local Food Work, who gave respective talks on Governance and Legal structures, and on Food Co-ops.

Many thanks to Rice Lane City Farm, and Roma in particular, for hosting the day, and making everybody feel welcome.

Also many thanks to the Knowsley based Target: Wellbeing funded project called Village Farm Cooks (or Cafe Society), who did a fantastic job cooking for the event.

Following lunch, we had a workshop session. Despite the fact it was the dreaded 'graveyard shift' and that we were in a stiffling polytunnel, we managed to have an interesting discussion about how to make food projects more sustainable and mutually supportive.

It is nearly a year since I last visited Rice Lane. In this time the horticultural area on the farm has been transormed, as a result of the Target: Wellbeing funding. I am very excited to see how much this project will have progressed by the end of TWB, and what will happen to it after that. Rice Lane is a brilliant project that has been running for 30 years, with the support of the local community, in a difficult economic environment. Walking around the farm, and the woodlands, I could not help feel that there is still much untapped potential for this land. Financial constraints, and the capacity of the small team of dedicated staff are major limiting factors here. I hope that Target: Wellbeing, in addition to providing funding, can help this project, by encouraging statuatory bodies and funding bodies to see the huge contribution this project makes to the area, and to continue to support it in the development of all its potential.

You can download resources from the day, including reports, photographs, and weblinks, here at the main Target: Wellbeing website.

BIG Lottery Fund - Wellbeing Conference

2010-03-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 4th - 5th March 2010
Organised by: BIG Lottery Fund
Venue: BIG Lottery Fund, Newcastle
Report by: Louise Robinson, Programme Officer

This event was organised by the BIG Lottery Fund to bring together the 17 wellbeing portfolios. The theme of the first day was evaluation, with a presentation from the national evaluators CLES and NEF (who developed the tools) on the first year evaluation findings. This was followed by group work around soft outcomes, social return on investment and engaging people in evaluation with low levels of literacy.

The second day kicked off with an opening speech from Dr Alan Billings (of Radio 4 - 'Thought For the Day' - fame) and was followed by an informative presentation around sustainability and social enterprise in the Olympic Fringe. The focus of the workshops was sustainability, best practice and the portfolio model as a way of delivery.

The event was an excellent opportunity to build relationships with our lovely colleagues at the BIG Lottery Fund and network with the other wellbeing portfolios. It was a relief to discover that the other portfolios are facing challenges with their evaluation too and provided an excellent opportunity to share areas of best practice, discuss common problems and swap evaluation tools for those projects who are not using the PHO questionnaires.

To find out more information about the BIG Lottery Fund and the other wellbeing portfolios visit BIG Lottery Fund's website

Target: Wellbeing at PROMiSE Network Event

2009-12-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 4th December 2009
Organised by: Voluntary Sector North West / PROMiSE Network
Venue: St.Thomas Centre, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Hi, I have written a blog on Target; Wellbeing's attendance at the second PROMiSE Northwest mental health networking event here on their social networking website.

GUEST POST - RSN "Targeting Health Outcomes" Training with MMU

2009-12-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

Date of event: 9th Dec 2009

Organised by: Target:Wellbeing Regional Support Network and MMU

Venue: Manchester Metropolitan University

Reported by : Jane Harding, Age Concern Cheshire

This event was the 2nd in a series of 3 sessions. The 1st session introduced national and regional policies on healthy eating, physical activity and mental wellbeing.

There was a good mix of participants representing the voluntary and 3rd sector as well as a couple of Target Well:Being projects. It was really interesting to hear about other groups' work, and the problems they face. This session was all about promoting and improving health, and made me think about what I can do differently to try and achieve changes in behaviour in my client group. If you want to know why your clients aren't doing what you want them to - this session explains it all!

Also, if you don't know your twitter from your flickr, or your myspace from your blog, look out for the next Online Resources training session (another plug for Target:Wellbeing Regional Support Network training). I never thought I'd be blogging, but here I am!

[If you're interested in attending one of our free Targeting Health Outcomes training programmes get in touch with Rhiannon on 0161 237 3200 or at rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk. There will be two more running starting in February]

NPC - ‘Counting Feelings; the +s and –s of measuring children’s well-being’

2009-12-04T04:36:00.000-08:00

Just a quick link to an interesting post on New Philanthropy Capital's blog about their recent event on measuring children's wellbeing:
http://newphilanthropycapital.blogspot.com/2009/12/counting-feelings.html

Northwest Public Wellbeing Conference 2009

2009-11-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 10th November 2009
Organised by: NHS NW and the Regions For Health Network
Venue: Midland Hotel, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Above right: Dr Ruth Hussey, Regional Director Public Health

This was the event of the year where all the bigwigs from the NHS across the Northwest came together and discussed Public Health. The conference was also combined with the 17th annual conference of the WHO Regions for Health Network, so there were delegates there from across Europe too.

Groundwork Northwest and Target: Wellbeing shared a stall, which was a great opportunity to speak to lot of senior officers from the NHS in the region about the vital work of Target: Wellbeing and it's projects. We also ran a workshop, which was delivered by Maggie Moody (Target: Wellbeing Portfolio Manager), and Ian MacArthur, Regional Director at Groundwork Northwest. The presentation included case studies of the following TWB projects:

One of the highlights of the conference for me was a seminal presentation by Lynne Friedli, who works across the EU to support the development of public mental health. She gave a wonderful talk about the importance of social networks to mental health, and why the NHS should be more proactive in supporting these.

There was also a lot of fascinating debate about the importance of natural spaces to mental and physical wellbeing, and about limits to growth, and the fact that happiness stops increasing above a certain per capita income. The conference gave me an insight into how public health is addressing the sustainability agenda.

You can see all the powerpoint presentations for the various sessions here: http://tiny.cc/nwphconfpres

Cycling Forum networking event

2009-11-27T04:16:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 12th November 2009
Organised by: Cycling Projects and Target: Wellbeing
Venue: Avenham Park, Preston
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Photo: River Ribble, looking North from Avenham Park

This was the second regional physical activity networking event, that we have organised for Target: Wellbeing projects, this time with a focus on cycling, and other outdoor activities. Most of the credit for organising this goes to Cycling Projects, who put together the programme, speakers and venue.

This partnership emerged through a realisation that Cycling Projects have an operation up and running in pretty much all of the 10 Target: Wellbeing programme areas, and in those where they do not, there are plans. Our collective aim therefore was to strengthen links between Cycling Projects, and other Target: Wellbeing funding cycling projects in the region, with a view to increased collaboration in the future. This aim was achieved to an extent, with some interesting new links being established between projects.

Cycling Projects put together an excellent programme of speakers for the morning, including:

Jenny Ashburner from Preston PCT talking about how they support Target: Wellbeing, and cycling initiatives in the City;
Ian Tierny talking about the work of cycling Projects in the Region
Yvonne Ashcroft talking about the Pedal Away TWB project in Preston;
David Jeffreys from Natural England, talking about partnership work with walking initiatives;
Alasdair Simpson from Lancs County Council talking about how the local authorities are promoting cycling in the county.

Copies of the presentations can be downloaded from Target: Wellbeing’s new web site when it goes live in the very near future.

Food Hubs Event

2009-11-27T04:06:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 9th November 2009
Organised by: Making Local Food Work (MLFW) and Sustain
Venue: Luther King House, South Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

I have been building links between Target: Wellbeing and Making Local Food Work in Manchester. I was pleased therefore to be able to attend this national MLFW event in Manchester, organised by Sustain, the Alliance for better food and farming.

Target: Wellbeing had a presence at the event through Manchester Food Futures, and the Herbie mobile grocery van. There were some very interesting presentations from food hub projects across the country. This was all good networking, and research and feeds very well into the 3rd sector support that I am providing to TWB projects. I am sure that co-operation and enterprise will form an important part of the sustainable funding strategies of many TWB projects in the future.

Building upon this event, and our links with MLFW, I am planning a regional food networking event with Rice Lane City Farm in North Liverpool, for March 10th. This will be headlined by Mark Simmonds and Sarah Alldred from Co-ops UK / MLFW, and will focus on sustainable enterprise. The event is open to TWB projects and other interested groups.

Forthcoming Targeting Health Outcomes Training

2009-11-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

Report by: Nancy Brown

Our projects improve health through lots of different activities and we want to give them the health knowledge to make the projects sustainable, so I am really excited about the new training that will be taking place over November - Febraury, which we designed with MMU's Health and Wellbeing Academy for our projects and other organisations.

I commissioned this course, and allocated a substaintial amount of our training budget to it, because there are no other course I know of which are sepcifically designed for third sector organisations to give them this knowledge and enable them to speak to health commissioners in their own language.

There are 3 sessions:
Session 1 focuses on how health affects people and what affects health.
Session 2 looks at how behaviour is changed to improve the health of service users.
Session 3 will cover pitching to funders and commissioners in their own language and what evidence will be needed to show the benefit of activities delivered.

For dates or to book e-mail rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk

We'll also be looking for a guest blogger to tell us what they think here, so let us know if you're interested in writing a few posts.

NWHPAF Conference 2009

2009-11-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

Date of event: 5th November 2009
Organised by: NWHPAF
Venue: Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool
Report by: Louise Robinson, Programme Officer, Target: Wellbeing

The North West Health and Physical Activity Forum are a voluntary organisation whose aim is to promote good practice and networking opportunities for people working in health and physical activity. This is similar to Target: Wellbeing's aims, so it was an interesting opportunity to go along and see how somebody else does it!

My highlights of the day were key speaker Nick Cavill talking about the impact of health on the economy; learning how the Angel Centre in Salford are using a social enterprise model to work in partnership around health and wellbeing and seeing one of the delivery organisations that works with Target: Wellbeing being heavily involved in the day - Cycling Projects. I also had a very interesting conversation over lunch with one of the key speakers about his experiences of living in China!

Also on the day NWHPAF launched their new website - which is a really good resource for people working in this field.

The Benefits of Collaboration

2009-11-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

Date of the event: 27th October + 3rd November 2009
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing & GMCVO
Venue: St.Thomas Centre, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

For some time now I have been touting the benefits of the national Collaboration programme of support offered by bassac, which includes free training and support from consultants. For many Target: Wellbeing projects, collaborative working may prove to be an important aspect of their exit strategies from the current BIG Lottery funding, whether this be through more joined up and comprehensive services, funding bids, or collaborative contracts from funders. In light of this, I arranged for Morag Rose from Greater manchester Council For Voluntary Services, to deliver the two day bassac Collaborative Benefits training.

The aim of the training was to give participants a good grounding in all things to do with collaboration, but also where possible, to establish collaboration 'champions' who can go on to stimulate and catalyse increased collaboration in their Target: Wellbeing programmes. To that end the training was well attended by 13 people from Target: Wellbeing projects or programmes.

The feedback from the trainig was generally very positive, with many participants reporting that they plan to think hard about how they can strengthen the collaborations that are happening with their projects and programmes. One outcome of this is that the Knowsley Programme leads (Mary Farrell and Shirley King) have arranged for Anne Harpur, who is a bassac consultant, to attend their next meeting in December, and facilitate a three hour collaborative planning workshop. The workshop will involve Target: Wellbeing projects, plus other 3rd sector providers in the area, and will look at collaborative possibilities for the future. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this workshop, as Knowsley may well be showing the way for similar positive developments in other programme areas.

Another interesting aspect of the training was that Niel Walbrum from GMCVO provided a presentation on the work he is doing to establish a large consortium of commissioning ready third sector providers, for the Greater Manchester sub region. The thinking is that through establishing the consortium, members will be in a position to respond rapidly, and successfully to health and wellbeing commissioning contracts in the 9 boroughs as and when they become available. This is an interesting model that I am looking at, which Target: Wellbeing and its various programmes may be able to learn from, in relation to future collaboration.

Environment, Wellbeing and Healthy Lifestyle Conference

2009-10-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

Guest Posting

Date of the event: 21st October 2009
Organised by: Staffordshire University
Venue: Best Western, Stoke on Trent
Reported by: Jane Friend, Development Manager, Groundwork NW

I attended the event to promote Groundwork's contribution to the improvement of the environment and health. A link to all presentations can be found at Staffordshire University

Speakers came from far and wide (the furthest away, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) to talk about a diverse range of topics linking to how the environment impacts on the health and wellbeing of communities and individuals.

What did I learn?
1. Marcus Sangster from the Forestry Commission reaffirmed the importance of access to a quality environment. Marcus gave a historical perspective to the positive effects of the environment on health. He felt that we had come full circle since the Kinder Trespass and that like then the full benefits of access to the environment are now being recognised again. To reflect the importance placed on health and wellbeing by a new project called NHS forest has been launched which aims to plant 1.3 million trees on NHS Estates.

2. Maximise the potential of green space. The quality of green space really matters when looking at the impact of the environment and health.

3. Edward Hobson from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment explained that places are shaped by history, typography and resources. Legacy means that some communities are better off than others in the same way vulnerable communities will be more affected by climate change. This is because the areas with the least green space will be the hottest areas. To counteract this, communities need to adapt by changing behaviour into every day life to build resilience to unavailable consequences of climate change.

4. Hugh Barton from WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Policy described how urban planning that takes into account access to public transport can increase the number of episodes of walking and cycling in an area. He pointed out the where people reside should be 800 metres from public transport should be multi model so that people can pick either the quickest or healthiest route.

5. Health Impact Assessments should be integrated into the planning process.

The event organiser Jon Fairburn did mention that the turn out to the event had doubled since last year. Baring in mind the success of this year’s event it looks like a bigger venue might be needed next year!

Mental Health First Aid

2009-10-16T04:27:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 14th and 15th October 2009
Organised by: Delivering Inclusion Network
Venue: Hulme, Manchester
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator - Third Sector

I have just undertaken two days of very interesting training on mental health first aid. I decided to do the training in order for me to have better understanding of the mental wellbeing work that is going on across the Target: Wellbeing portfolio. Also living in an inner city area where mental health issues are in your face, I thought it would be useful on a day to day basis. At the start of the course I was apprehensive that because I was not a frontline mental health worker, I might be a little out of my depth. As it turned out, my life experiences, and a general interest in psychology, set me up quite well for the experience. I was also reassured to find out that the training is designed for the public as much as for front line workers. The majority of folk on the course are working on the front line, and it was an inspiring experience meeting and talking to them.

The Mental Health First Aid training is new to this country, and the course was delivered by the Delivering Inclusion Network, which in Manchester is a partnership of third sector providers, including HARP, Mind, and the Roby. HARP are the delivery organisation behind Bite, which is part of the Target: Wellbeing Programme. The trainers were Rowena Pyott from Bite, and Graham Hayes, who is a service user, and works for Mind in Manchester, and it was very useful to get first hand accounts from him.

The training itself gives an overview of general mental health issues, including depression, anxiety disorders, and psychosis. (More information can be found on their website.) It provides you with the knowledge to be able to assess problems at an early stage, and make useful interventions. I will definitely be recommending the training to other Target: Wellbeing projects in the future, if it is repeated, and will help to promote it on our new website when it goes live.

Winning at Wellbeing

2009-10-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 30th September 2009
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing
Venue: Novas Contemporary Urban Centre, Liverpool
Report by: Rob Squires, Wellbeing Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Well the big day finally came and went! Thanks to Rhiannon, who put loads of time and effort into making it happen, the whole event was carried out without a hitch .. we even managed to keep to the schedule. I remember talking to other members of the TWB team as the day progressed, and sharing surprise at just how smoothly things were going. This was reflected in the feedback forms, which showed that participants appreciated the day as much as we did.

Despite the fact that Sue Henry, chair of the Board of Governors was not able to make it, due to sickness, we got the day of to a positive start with an inspiring Top 5 Good News stories. The Knowsley programme excelled in this, and have laid down the gauntlet, for other TWB programmes to get better at providing us with information on all the good things that are happening in your areas.

The day proceeded with a host of different workshops and activities, too many to name, from a diversity of partners and collaborators. TWB projects 'Shared their successes' by running mini sessions throughout the morning, in which they told us all about how their projects are working. There were also wellbeing exercises including chair based exercise by Age Concern Cheshire, and salsa dancing by Shimmey Shimmey Shake Shake. I delivered a 45 minute workshop on Sustainable Funding which was well attended, in which I reinforced the message that we are already half way through our 4 year TWB programme, and need to be thinking about how we can innovate, and work together, to sustain projects when the funding runs out.

After lunch there was an Open Space workshop session, which was an opportunity for participants to discuss issues amongst peers, that were of concern to them. I pulled together a group discussion on practice based commissioning, and we chewed the fat on this for a while, sharing a range of different views. Mark Dorris and Alan Farrier from UCLan, closed the day as our two appointed 'key note listeners', giving a wonderful summary of everything that happened, and the major learnings from the day.

The presentations from the event, along with Mark and Alan's final report will be made available on our new web site very shortly.

Cook 4 Life Harvest Celebration

2009-09-21T03:38:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 15th September 2009
Organised by: NCVO
Venue: Offshoots Permaculture, Burnley
Report by: Rob Squires, Wellbeing Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

This was the third regional networking event that I have organised for Target: Wellbeing, the objective being to connect people accross the region doing work around healthy eating. The day followed the same format as the mental health and physial activity events in July, in that it was headlined by a talker from Government Office North West. On this occasion it was Angela Towers, who is the lead on Food and Health Issues at GONW, and also at the FSA (Food Standards Agency). Angela gave a fine presentation about the work of these two agencies, and how they support 3rd Sector projects such as those in Target: Wellbeing, as well as impressing upon the group, how vital the work of our projects are to regional healthy eating strategies. (A copy of Angela's presentation is available on request .. please email me.)

Angela's presentation was delivered in a yurt, which is a traditional Tibetan structure. The yurt was lined with straw bales, and was filled with 16 enthusiastic participants. These included three people from Making Local Food Work, which is a national infrastructure project supporting local food enterprises. One of these was Maressa Bossano, who supports the Food C0-ops programme, and traveled all the way from Hastings especially to see us!

With the approach of the autumn equinox, and the end of the growing season, the day also included a harvest celebration lunch, where participants brought along fruit from the land, and dishes made from ingredients from their projects. Following this was a fascinating tour of Offshoots Permaculture project by Phill Dewhurst. Offshoots is managed by Groundwork East Lancs, and is part of the Target: Wellbeing programme. It is a flagship project in Burnley, demonstrating many features of sustainable living, including food growing, community composting, compost toilets, renewable energy and sustainable building.

Follow up:
I am already planning a follow-up for this event, which will take place at Rice Lane City Farm in Liverpool next year. Making Local Food Work will headline this event, and the theme will be around social enterprise skills sharing for Target: Wellbeing food projects. The event will also be timed to co-incide with the lambing season, and participants will be able to get involved in this. A couple of days after the Harvest Celebration event at Offshoots, I visited Rice Lane, for a planning meeting with Roma Margret. At the same time I organised a three way meeting with Nicola Lee who is the director of food with Liverpool MBC. Both Nicola and I had a fascinating morning learning about the work of the farm, and meeting some of the rare livestock that are bred there.

In the Shadow

2009-09-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

PART I - GUEST BLOG

Date of event: 9th September 2009
Organised by: NCVO
Venue: Groundwork Northwest
Report by: Mike Chambers, Head of Local Government Information and Analysis

It happened while I was on leave in August. While I was sunning myself in the mountains, Government Office was busily volunteering me for a day shadowing Rob Squires. I could have complained and, I guess, they could have apologised, but either of these would have been a first (honest!). But why complain? I have always been curious about the inside story of a cluster of projects delivering our vision for the North West.

It's not been what I expected. I don't know why but I was expecting brass tacks and lots of detail but instead I have spent the time looking at philosophy, ethics and the futures for the region's communities. I imagined we would occupy seperate worlds with different priorities and imperatives but in fact we have lots in common; not least the goals, frustrations and mysteries of health inequalities and life chances.

At the back of my mind is the haunting question of whether there will really be wider benefits than the joys of a mushroom melt lunch and some delightful chats with a collection of smart people. Well, there are. I hadn't appreciated that the mound of information we are sat on in Government Office could be useful to others, or the potential of Target: Wellbeing to give us a wealth of examples of initiatives to illustrate what can be done. So we will be extending our networks by looking at sharing information and analytical tools.

Its still only half time in the shadowing process. The second leg will be in Government Office next week. So watch this space.

PART II

Date of event: 16th September 2009
Organised by: NCVO
Venue: Government Office North West
Report by: Rob Squires, Wellbeing Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

It all began whilst everyone else at Target: Wellbeing was on holiday. In a quiet momment in the office I nonchalantly applied to a NCVO scheme called A Day In the Life, in which I would shadow somone in local government for a day, and in return they would shadow me. My reason for applying was that I wanted to discover what the human side of a government agency was like. When Mike arrived in our office last week, my first impressions of him were that he was very cool and confident. He also turned out to be quite fascinating, with a rich depth of experience, and a broad outlook on life.

During my afternoon in Government Office with Mike, we talked quite a lot about issues to do with data analysis and dissemination. He introduced me to his information and analysis manager, Mark Ellison, and we looked at some of the reporting formats they are developing for their data. They are keen to develop a closer partnership with Groundwork Northwest, and Target: Wellbeing as an outcome of A Day In the Life. Mark has offered to come into our office soon and give us some support in shaping up the evaluation data that we are getting from the 95 projects in Target: Wellbeing.

Community Voices on North Manchester FM

2009-08-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 14/08/09
Organised by: North Manchester FM
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator - Third Sector

I have just returned from a radio interview, on the North Manchester FM Community Voices show, with presenter Michael Snaith. I have known Michael for some time, as he is a community health activist and North Manchester resident and before starting with Target: Wellbeing, I volunteered for the Health and Wellbeing Community Network in Manchester, as a third sector representative on the Food Futures Board.

Michael began the interview with a discussion about the links between food production, access and security, and health and wellbeing. We went on to talk a lot about the holistic nature of modern public health policy (the wider determinants of public health), and how this is being reflected through the work of Target: Wellbeing partners like GONW and the Manchester Joint Health Unit, who run the city’s Target: Wellbeing programme.

I gave an overview of the regional portfolio, but with it being North Manchester FM, the focus was on what Manchester projects are doing for people in this area. We talked a lot about the interconnectedness of the three Target: Wellbeing outcomes:
- mental health
- physical activity
- healthy eating

We also talked a lot about the connections between the projects in the Manchester Programme, painting a truly holistic picture.

Unfortunately before the show I did not have a chance to network the opportunity for Manchester projects to go on air with me. If anyone is interested however, Michael is keen to get interviews from Target: Wellbeing projects that are operating in the area. It would also be interesting to try and get beneficiaries on air, to give first hand experiences of the benefits they are experiencing. Next time there is an opportunity for projects to go on air, I will make sure projects get lots of advanced notice.

Good Food, Good Governance Training

2009-07-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 29/07/09
Organised by: Making Local Food Work Co-operatives Uk
Venue: Leeds Church Institute
Report by: Nancy Brown, Network Co-ordinator - Public Health

This was an excellent all day session on structures and governance for food co-operatives which outlined the different legal structures for community food organisations and the features and benefits these structures. It also looked at common issues with governing these organsisations and how to resolve them to improve governance. It was a great interactive session.

For more information contact Mark Simmonds on 0161 246 2953 or e-mail at
Mark.R.Simmonds@cooperatives-uk.coop

Corporate Community Involvement Seminar: Creating Impact

2009-07-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 17/07/09
Organised by: NCVO
Venue: NCVO, London
Report by: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer

First up to present was Mike Tuffrey, founding Director of Corporate Citizenship. Mike talked about the London Benchmarking Group (LBG), which was formed 1994 by BP, Grand Met, NatWest, IBM, Marks & Spencer and Whitbread, who needed an investment model and to demonstrate good community management. The result was “LBG model” (see page 8 of Mike’s presentation), which helps companies assess what they invest into communities and to report more effectively the impact of this investment.

This was very relevant to Target: Wellbeing, with all our projects currently grappling with the roll out of our portfolio-wide evaluation at the moment. Designed by the North West Public Health Observatory (NWPHO), it aims to evaluate the outcomes, rather than outputs and I was very pleased to see that Mike’s advice was to focus on Inputs Vs Impacts (the same as our “Outcomes”, just different jargon!) rather than just Outputs when reporting.

For the uninitiated a quick description of the difference might be useful:
INPUTS are the resources put into your project to make it happen. These could include funding, volunteer time, training, etc.
OUTPUTS are the activities or services your project delivers in order to create outcomes. These could include the number of sessions delivered, attendance at those sessions, etc.
OUTCOMES are the long term changes, benefits, learning, etc. that happen as a result of your project. E.g. People reporting improved levels of food preparation and cooking skills and people reporting increased self esteem.

Our evaluation planning process helps project officers identify what their inputs, outputs and outcomes are, and how they can evaluate these. As every single one of our projects will be thinking about their evaluation in these terms, whether they are using Target: Wellbeing’s evaluation tools or not, Mike’s presentation gave me confidence that they will be better equipped to approach potential corporate (and other kinds of) funders as a result of the hardwork we’re all putting into our evaluation process at the moment!

Next to the podium was Dr Richard Piper, Head of Strategy and Impact at NCVO, who had quite a different, and at times controversial, message about measuring and reporting impact. Richard suggested that measuring impact should only be done when it has a purpose, and that there were negative elements to what he termed, “The Measurement Fallacy”, such as the proliferation of jargon and toolkits, and that it might well divert attention from managing the impact and communicating it.

However, I’ve seen Richard speak before at the NCVO’s/ Media Trust's marketing conference back in January, and I felt his message here was very similar to what he was saying back then – that impact reporting needs to actually communicate the things that will affect the people you want to speak to (e.g. potential funders, corporate or otherwise) in a way they will understand. I would certainly agree it’s too easy to fall into the old annual report trap of a 50 page glossy brochure, with reams of facts and figures even though we’re never sure who actually reads them. And if someone did read them would they actually be moved by what they read?

For me this doesn’t mean not using the results of impact evaluation, but communicating them in a way that really illustrates that impact, perhaps through a combination of facts and figures, photographs and testimonials, and in a format that is engaging for it's planned recipient. But more than this, Richard pointed out that we shouldn’t just report on the main, strategic outcomes, that all the positive things that happen on the periphery (like participants making friends at a class, or just a general feeling of wellbeing during the session) was worth reporting too. Richard calls this the “Full Value”, and you can read more about it on page 8 of his presentation.

His overarching point is summarised in the introduction to Performance Hub’s publication, “True Colours”, which he co-wrote with Jake Eliot:

“The future success of every third sector organisation depends partly on whether or not it can persuade other people that it is valuable and worthy of their attention and support. If you can get these people – volunteers and donors, trustees and employees, partners and funders, and the audiences of lobbying and campaigning – contributing positively to you organisation, its future will be bright. But many third sector organisations don’t communicate their value strongly enough, or tell others about their successes. As a result many organisations are misunderstood and under-appreciated.”

With Target: Wellbeing’s first evaluation report from the NWPHO due in October, this gave me lots of food for thought about how best to present the information in the most accessible and digestible way to our various stakeholders. So I’ve been devouring “True Colours”, and making lots of plans, none of which involve producing a chunky, glossy tome of an annual report!

You can read more about the session and view the presentations here.

Target: Wellbeing has a copy of “True Colours” in our library, which any Target: Wellbeing project can borrow. Just email me at rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk . Alternatively you can buy your own copy here.

Blues Skies

2009-07-17T08:31:00.001-07:00

Date of event: 15/07/09
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing Regional Support Network
Venue: Mansion House Active Age Centre, Age Concern Halton and St.Helens
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator - Third Sector

This was the second Target: Wellbeing networking event and this time the aim was to connect projects across the region that work on mental health issues.

The venue for the event was the stunning Age Concern Mansion House, located in Victoria Park outside St Helens town centre. The event was a trip down memory lane for me, as I used to work at the Mansion House as the gardener back in 1996. When I joined the Target: Wellbeing team I was intrigued to learn that the Trust Matters 50+ Counselling service is based there, and when I met Paul Chadwick who runs the project, I was very impressed with the work they are doing and was keen to visit the Mansion House again.

After the networking event I had a little look round, and was pleased to see that the house and gardens have maintained their splendour. Upon entering the kitchen gardens I was amazed to see that some willow snaps I had planted back in ’96 have grown into beautiful 30ft high trees.

Paul gave a great presentation about their counselling service, and told a really touching story about a client, who had been feeling suicidal until receiving services from Paul and his team, who put him back on track. The client told Paul that he had put the rope in his hands that saved his life, and that it was Paul's team that pulled him out of the hole. The client gave Paul a copy of a Fathers' Day card from his children, telling him how much they loved and appreciated him. He told Paul that without the help of Trust Matters he probably would not have been alive to this day, to receive the card.

Stories like this are the real stuff, and they cut straight through all the frustrations we feel, as we struggle to evidence the impact that Target: Wellbeing is having, and motivate us to carry on doing what we do.

In addition to Paul, there was a fascinating presentation from Jude Stansfield, Public Mental Health and Wellbeing lead with Government Office North West, who gave us the low down on policy issues in the region.

Amongst other things, Jude gave us a sneak preview of New Horizons from the Department of Health, which is a new vision and programme of work to improve the mental wellbeing of everyone, as well as continuing to improve the quality and accessibility of mental health services. It aims to address the inequalities that different groups in society experience, both in accessing services and in levels of mental health. It will set out the national direction from 2010.

Jude also told us about PROMiSE, which is a new third sector regional mental health network, being pulled together by Voluntary Sector North West and NHS North West, in order to link the sector in with the region’s Mental Health Improvement Programme. PROMiSE are having their launch event on September 7^th in Preston (see the VSNW website for more information), and they will be looking for representatives from the sector to sit on the MHIP’s steering and stakeholder boards. Target: wellbeing intends to put forward an applicant to this position, to make sure that mental health projects within our network have an influence within decision making in this area.

Jude also happened to drop into the conversation, that she has organised it for Target: Wellbeing to provide a workshop at the Northwest Wellbeing Conference 2009. This is a important event which will incorporate the 6^th annual Northwest Public Health Conference and the 17^th annual conference of the WHO Regions For Health Network. The theme of our workshop will be around ‘Lessons learned’. We are keen to involve projects in the delivery of this workshop and will be circulating more information soon. Thank you to Jude for pulling this workshop out of a bag, and giving us this opportunity to make an impression.

There were around 20 people at our networking event in all, representing different projects and programmes from across the region. I took the opportunity therefore, to run a workshop and get information from people about how we can strengthen the Target: Wellbeing network. I asked the same 4 questions as I did at the Running with the Times networking event, at the National Wildflower Centre, last week (see previous blog to see what these are). As with this event, I will be collating the information generated from Networking events, and producing a summary report later in the year.

Thanks to everybody that came to the Mansion House, you are all stars, and I look forward to seeing you at future events.

Running with the Times

2009-07-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

Date of event: 08/07/09
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing Regional Support Network
Venue: National Wildflower Centre, Courthey Park, Knowsley (Landlife)
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator - Third Sector

This was the first in a series of networking events I am organising to connect people across the region involved in Target: Wellbeing. The event was attended by over a dozen workers from projects and programmes that focus or involve Physical Activity.

The event included a talk by Jackie Brennan, who is the Physical Activity lead for the Regional Department of Health team and Government Office North West. Amongst other things, Jackie talked about Be Active, Be Healthy, which is the national physical activity strategy, and how Target: Wellbeing projects contribute to this. In addition she talked about the importance of the regional Target: Wellbeing evaluation, and how the knowledge that projects are generating will help inform and shape policy in the region.

There was also a presentation and site tour by Jan Pell, who manages the Target: Wellbeing Great Outdoors project at the Wildflower Centre. She talked about the 'Natural Health System' and how connecting people with nature, and outdoor spaces, can improve their health and wellbeing. The National Wildflower Centre is playing a very positive role within the Knowsley Target: Wellbeing programme, and is acting as a hub, from which a number of the different projects are delivering activities. We are hoping that this natural collaboration can be built upon as the programme progresses.

I have copies of both Jackie and Jan's presentations and if you want them, then please email me here.

In addition, we ran a short workshop, asking the following four questions:
1. How can Target: Wellbeing partners contribute most effectively to regional strategy?
2. Where do projects need to be by the end of the Target: Wellbeing programme?
3. How can Target: Wellbeing projects, plus programme leads collaborate more closely in the future?
4. Who / what do you want from future Target: Wellbeing networking events?

I have written up the results of this workshop, and emailed them to those that participated in the workshop - if you were not there, but would like a copy, then please email me. I will be running a series of other networking events over the next few weeks, including Mental Health event next week, and Healthy Eating day in September, and will be running similar workshops during these. The information generated will be put together into a short summary report, that will be made available to all.

New Lifestyles: Pychology of Health Behaviour

2009-06-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

Date of Event: Tuesday 23rd June 2009
Organised by: Hampsons Solutions
Venue: Haighton Manor, Preston
Report by: Nancy Brown

This training session focused on the psychology of behaviour and how we can encourage beneficiaries to take up services we provide by marketing it in more appealing ways by using different language to attact people to the experience of taking part in the service. It was really useful!
www.hampsonsolutions.co.uk

GUEST BLOG - RSN Communications and Marketing Training

2009-06-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

As this event was run by us we asked one of the attendees from a Target: Wellbeing project to act as a guest writer on our blog and tell us what she thought. If you'd like to write about any of the Target: Welbeing events or training you've attended let us know at targetwellbeing@groundwork.org.uk

Date of Event: Tuesday 23rd June 2009
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing, Regional Support Network
Venue: Groundwork NW, Manchester
Report by: Julie Denham, Marketing & Design Officer from Age Concern Mid Mersey (www.acmm.org.uk), which runs the Trust Matters 50+ Counselling Service Project, part of the the Target: Wellbeing programme in St Helens

"Right from the outset I felt hopeful about this training and was not disappointed. It proved to be a small interactive group with an informal and relaxed feel to it.

The training itself began with a helpful overview of branding requirements, a few useful hints and tips regarding best practice for marketing material content and layout, and an all important checklist to avoid those costly (but all too easy) mistakes. We had a good run through too of the communications and marketing options available to us, including a discussion of some very practical and effective methods often overlooked. We received some good tips too on dealing with the press, and putting together targeted press releases with a style appropriate for the specific media. A discussion of marketing planning brought each of the elements together with a strong message that one size very much doesn’t fit all.

Instead throughout was a strong message of the need to understand what each of us wanted to achieve from our marketing, what message we wanted to get across and to whom, what style and format those messages should take and a consideration of the media and methods most appropriate for our target audiences, including the messages we might want to get across to those who could help us achieve our targets!

Altogether an excellent session - well thought through, informal and friendly providing opportunity for participants to discuss and think about individual project needs. I came away feeling I’d gained fresh ideas and a different perspective on old ones."

The Regional Support Network are planning more Communications and Marketing training sessions which will be launched in September. If you would like to notify us of your interest in taking part email Rhiannon at rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk. You can also contact Rhiannon for a list of training and networking session taking place between now and September.

BREAKING NEWS - NHS NW Wellbeing Conference 2009

2009-06-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have just received information on the NHS Northwest Wellbeing Conference 2009, which is focussing on Wellbeing and the economy, sustainable communities, and inequalities. All very topical at the moment it would seem!

The conference brings together the 6th annual Northwest Public Health conference, and the 17th annual conference of the WHO Regions for Health Network, so it will be a big do! This will be at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, November 9th and 10th. I am hoping that Target: Wellbeing projects will make an impact at this conference. More info on this can be got from Deborah.Littlewood@dh.gsi.gov.uk at Government Office North West.

Rob goes on tour - NW Social Enterprise Trade Fair, Sustainable Funding Annual Gathering and Groundwork NW Staff Conference

2009-06-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, three conferences in three days .. intense!

Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator – Third Sector

Day 1 (16th Jun 09)

The 1st Northwest social enterprise trade fair

Organised by: Social Enterprise North West

Venue: Aintree Race Course

Day 1 of my grand tour was the first regional social enterprise conference at Aintree Racecourse, in a large building shaped like an aircraft hanger. The event was organised as a trade fair, with around 100 exhibitors, including trading social enterprises, and a wide variety of infrastructure support agencies. As I travelled on the train to the venue I wondered if I would know many people there, and was pleased on arrival to meet many friends, old and new. Of note amongst these were Co-ops UK who assist with the excellent Making Local Food Work project, and can provide free training and advice around food co-ops, legal structures, and governance issues.

Also present were Voluntary Sector North West, who are a Target: Wellbeing partner, and are currently championing the sector in the development of the new RS 2010 regional strategy. In the afternoon, I went to a talk by Simon Nooks who is head of strategy and performance for NWDA and is therefore a big fish in the RS 2010. Inequalities is a current emerging issue within the Strategy, with the release of the Equality Trust's new research which has proof from 50 countries, that economies with high levels of inequality perform very badly, in almost every way.

There is solid evidence of increased physical and mental health problems, obesity, drug abuse, imprisonment, lack of trust in community, violence, teenage birth, and chid well-being - all of which are issues that Target: Wellbeing projects aim to reduce. It would seem that since economic inequalities continue to grow, it is not all about economic growth and trickle down theory anymore. In addition to the business as usual economic growth priority, it would seem that the RS 2010 policy makers are actually considering measures to reduce financial inequalities in the region as well!

Day 2 (17th Jun)

Sustainable Funding Annual Gathering

Organised by: NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations)

Venue: New Welcome Centre, London

Day two took me to the capital, for a conference on Sustainable Funding, organised by NCVO - the National Council for Volunteer Organisations. This seemed like a somewhat prodigious occasion, compared with the more gritty northern social enterprise do, the day before. There was lots of rhetoric about civil society, and good examples of 3rd Sector organisations that have diversified their income, in order to develop more sustainable funding strategies.

I am running an Introduction to Sustainable Funding training session soon, for Target: Wellbeing projects, and will be passing on some of the info gleaned from this conference then.

Day 3 (18th Jun)

Groundwork Northwest staff conference

Venue: University of Manchester

Back in Manchester for the Groundwork Northwest staff conference, which was organised by a team in the same office as Target: Wellbeing. I'm feeling a bit more on home-ground here :-)

I went to an interesting workshop lead by Richard Caulfield, Chief Exec of VSNW and Ian MacArthur, regional director of Groundwork Northwest. Richard led a discussion about sector branding, and whether Voluntary and Community sector is more appropriate than Third Sector? Apparently NCVO, the sector lead are not happy with either, and prefer the term 'civil society' or sector. Richard also speculated that if the Conservatives win the next election, the Office of the Third Sector will probably be re-branded as the Office of Civil Society, or something like this. Interesting .. this may explain why NCVO are steering away from the terms VCS and 3rd Sector.

Both Richard and Ian MacArthur sit on 4NW, which is the new Regional Assembly, where they advocate 3rd Sector (VCS?) issues. There was more discussion in this workshop about the influence that the Equality Trust's new research is having on policy makers within RS 2010. Interestingly the Equality Trust report talks about Equality not Growth, and Global Warming. I am interested to see how the RS 2010 will propose to deliver sustained economic growth, whilst simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions, and increasing the health, well-being and happiness of people in the region.

A highlight of the day was the Green Triangle Awards, for the best Groundwork projects in the NW. Offshoots Permaculture project, which is part of the Target: Wellbeing portfolio won the prize for the Environmental Action category. Pictured is Phill Dewhurst from Offshoots, along with two volunteers, receiving their award from Cllr Neil Swannick (Manchester). You can watch the the promotion film for Offshoots that was shown at the ceremony, here on Youtube.

Pedal Away .. sunshine on a rainy day!

2009-06-11T02:03:00.000-07:00

Date of event: Wednesday 10th June 09, 10am – 12.30pm
Organised by: Pedal Away in Knowsley
Venue: National Wildflower Centre
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator – Third Sector

Yesterday I took a trip to Knowsley to visit the Pedal Away project, which is being lead Kelly Mckeown from the national Cycling Projects charity. It was an overcast summer morning, as we assembled in the cafe at the National Wildflower Centre run by Landlife, and based in Courthey Park, on the border between Knowsley and Liverpool. Kelly is an excellent cycle leader, and as the sun was trying to break through the clouds, she led us of on our ride, with a sense of confidence, and good humour. We were taken on a six mile journey, which took us through an adjacent housing estate, and onto the Liverpool Loop, which is an old railway line, which has been converted by Sustrans into a cycle path, and forms part of the Transpennine route which goes all the way to Hull. We followed the route south as far as Halewood Environment Centre, where we stopped for a rest, before returning back up to the Loop Line, and into the grounds of the Wildflower Centre. As we returned to the Centre, it was just beginning to rain .. I was very impressed with Kelly's organisational skills .. she even had the weather under control ;-) Landlife have been sowing wildflower seeds in the park around their Centre for many years, and even though the sky was grey, the surrounding environment was a picture to behold.

There were an interesting mix of volunteers and beneficiaries on the ride. These included a married couple who joined the group in order to encourage their son, who is a little disengaged with society at the moment, plus it also included a woman who has been attending with her father who has had a heart attack. There were also a number of younger people, including a school student, a university student, and a PHD, who were using the project to get work experience as part of their learning. Participants had a range of cycling skills, and some of them were low in self-confidence when it came to riding bikes on the open road. Because of this, Kelly walked the group through the housing estate until we reached the Liverpool Loop Line. By the time we returned, after an easy-going six mile ride along the Loop, confidence was high, and the group were happy to cycle on the roads through the estate and the traffic.

The National Wildflower Centre made an excellent venue for starting and ending the ride. Landlife run an excellent project called the Great Outdoors, which is also a part of the Target: Wellbeing portfolio, and the Centre has excellent facilities to rent, including workshop space and a cafe. As such, we are using it as the venue for a regional physical activity networking event for Target: Wellbeing projects, which is being organised for Wednesday July 8th. More info on this event will be circulated soon.

Ellesmere Port Programme Launch

2009-05-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

Date of event: Wednesday 26th May 09, 9am – 3.00pm
Organised by: Ellesmere Port TWB Programme (West Cheshire PCT)
Venue: Port Arcades shopping centre
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator – Third Sector

Following the May Day bank holiday weekend, Rhiannon and I attended the launch of the Ellesmere Port Target: Wellbeing Launch event. The event was delivered by stall-holders, from each of the projects in the Programme, and took place in the foyee of the shopping centre, and under the awnings of the market hall. It was a bright, sunny day, although there was a cold wind blowing in from the Mersey.

The Ellesmere Port projects did a wonderful job of representing Target: Wellbeing, with a variety of different activites, including belly dancing, skipping, name the fruit 'n veg, making hanging baskets, a health walk, and bike repairs. There was also a free prize draw, with £200 bike vouchers on offer from Big Bills Bikes. The prize draw also doubled up as a cunning way of collecting information about local people, and the kinds of physical activities that they like to do. As one young resident wrote, as he enthusiastic completed his prize draw form, "I think the event is really good, because it gets people into doing healthy things!"

The launch was also attended by a number of VIPs, including John Church, who is the chair of NHS Western Cheshire, who seemed very impressed by the wide range of projects being delivered by the Programme. A good day all in all, which has gone a long way to raising the profile of Target: Wellbeing, in Ellesmere Port, and the wider area. Many thanks to Sue Bliss and her team for making it happen.

National Leaders in Health Programme Inroductory Event

2009-05-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Date of event: Friday 15th May 2009
Organised by: Improvement Foundation
Venue: Monkbar Hotel, York
Reported by: Maggie Moody, Portfolio Manager

Having received a bursary from the IDeA, I started the National Leading Improvement for Health and Well-being Programme last week.

I'll be keeping a blog over the next year to chart my progress and share my experiences. To check it out click here.

Good Governance and Legal Structures for local food enterprises

2009-05-19T04:58:00.000-07:00

Date of event: Weds 13th May
Organised by: Co-ops UK in partnership with Manchester Ensemble
Venue: Miles Platting Library, North Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires

Hello everyone,

Last week I assisted with an event about Good Governance and Legal Structures, which was delivered free of charge, by Co-ops UK who are delivery partners within the national Making Local Food Work programme. The training was organised in partnership with Ensemble who are a Manchester based Cameroon refugee support group, who have funding from Manchester Food Futures, and are in the process of setting up a community cafe social enterprise.

The training focussed more on legal structures than governance issues. and looked at different forms, including unincorporated associations, company limited by guarentee, community interest companies, bonafide co-operatives, and community interest societies. We also had a good look at investment models made available through Industrial and provident Societies, including loan stock and membership share issues.

The training was delivered by Mark Simmonds, with support from Sarah Alldred, both of whom were excellent. I have arranged a meeting with them and they will be coming into the Groundwork office at the end of May, to discuss how we can work with Co-ops UK, to provide training around good governance, leagal structures, and local food, to projects within the Target: wellbeing portfolio.

Compact in the Northwest – creating better outcomes for citizens, and stronger communities

2009-05-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Date of event: Wednesday 21st January 2009, 1pm – 3.30pm
Organised by: VSNW, CftC
Venue: Gujarat Centre, Preston
Report by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator – Third Sector
Link to event webpage: http://www.vsnw.org.uk/events/past

Voluntary Sector North West (VSNW) in collaboration with Commission for the Compact (CftC), recently hosted a workshop in Preston, to explain the Compact, and how it can strengthen the Third Sector.

About Compacts:
Compacts are essentially agreements that shape the relationship between government, and the third sector, with the aim of creating betting outcomes for citizens, and stronger communities. They exist at three levels: local, regional, and the national Compact .At the local level, Compacts exist between the local authority and the third sector. Also in some areas additional Compacts have been developed between PCTs and the third sector. Smaller organisations, working in one locality can benefit from local Compacts, whilst the regional and national versions are designed to support larger organisations with a wider reach.

About CftC:
CftC is a ‘Non-departmental public body’ (NDPB), established in 2007, and is sponsored by the Office of the Third Sector in consultation with the voluntary and community sector. The purpose of the Commission is to promote effective partnership working between the public and the third sector through the application of the Compact and its five codes of practice. It is not a regulatory body and does not have any legal powers. Its programme of work includes promoting awareness and implementation of the Compact, undertaking research and policy projects, developing an evidence base on the Compact's progress, sharing good practice and exploring key themes that affect the relationship between the statutory and voluntary sectors.

Other organisations involved in developing the Compact include Compact Voice which is an independent body representing the Third Sector, the Office of the Third Sector, and the Local Government Association. More information on the roles of these partners in the Compact can be found on the Commission’s website at http://www.thecompact.org.uk . There is also a database on thecompact.org.uk with a complete listing of local Compacts, and up to date contact details.

The Regional Compact for the Northwest is currently out for consultation, and can be downloaded from http://www.vsnw.org.uk/compact. The closing date for the consultation is Friday February 27th. Richard Caulfield, Chief Executive of VSNW says: “I am confident that this Compact will lead to improved partnership working and relationships between the public and third sectors in the region. This is crucial to the economic and social well-being in the region and it is timely that the production of this Compact coincides with the development of an integrated [economic] strategy for the region”.

What I learnt at this event:
An interesting discovery from the workshop in Preston is that there is a high level of expertise in the Compact in the Wirral area, where local government have been working closely with the Third Sector, to develop a strong and effective local Compact. The opinions of the Third Sector were vocalised skilfully during the workshop by Clint Agard from Wirral Change, which is a black and racial minorities outreach service.

The workshop in Preston was very much a two-way process, in which CftC explained how the Compact structure works, plus consulted with participants about how it can all be improved. One outcome from the workshop was that it became evident that it would be good to do similar workshops, at the local level, which is an activity that CftC are keen to support.. If you would like to link up with the Commission, to host a Compact workshops in your area, then contact Ruth Fennemore: email ruth.fennemore@thecompact.org.uk ; phone 0121 237 5912.