Well-being & Big Society
Big Society and Well-being are both key features of the Coalition Government's policy. Big Society is a vision for greater personal, professional and civic responsibility where social problems are solved by the communities they effect. Research shows that social action such as volunteering which is expected to increase under the Big Society will have positive effects on individual's well-being including happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, a sense of control and improved physical health.
Since 2008 fifteen Well UK partners have taken part in the £3.9m Big Lottery funded South West Well-being programme which aims to improve the well-being of 20,000 people across the region, through a range of innovative and exciting services along the three themes of family healthy eating, physical exercise for older people and improving low level mental health well-being.
The South West Well-being programme has been evaluated throughout three years by the University of the West of England (UWE) and the following documents are available:
- Executive Summary of the Key Findings from each year of the evaluation. Download (737 kb)
- Learning From Consortium Working (Nov 2010)-Download (190 kb)
- SWWB Case studies - Download (2.44mb)
Full reports for years 1 and 2 are available on request by e-mail. The third year report will be available in March 2011.
The South West Well-being programme is one of a family of national projects which are being evaluated by CLES (Centre for Local Economic Strategies) on behalf of Big Lottery. In Well-Being Matters (Issue 4 (122kb)) CLES has identified the very strong links between Well-being and the Big Society evidenced by the successes of the Well-Being Programme.
