State of Life

What really makes our life happier and healthier or perhaps more importantly just less miserable? Here it is - years of work in one big picture. Where’s WELLBY? This poster is a guide to a happier and healthier life. It’s not an exhaustive list but an attempt to capture in one place those things that really matter and how they compare in value and importance. It's a uniquely useful guide to help individuals, organisations and even nations prioritise their investment of time, energy and funding. Working in wellbeing for nearly 10 years we were waiting for someone to do this. No-one did. So we made a start and got it illustrated with suitable skill and humour by the superb Simon Ecob (of Viz comic fame). Alongside the poster is our set of tools and guidance that can help you make a start on understanding and measuring social value and wellbeing. We use the new HM Treasury recommended measure of economic value for wellbeing - the WELLBY. Alongside the poster is a technical report on how we arrive at the figures using some of the best data sets and analysis techniques available. And it's ON SALE NOW. £6 download or £20 for a glorious A2 poster for the wall of your office, bedroom or loo. https://lnkd.in/e_4ebfEE #wellbeing #economics #investment

We're part of a (great) coalition calling on government to measure young people's wellbeing - join the campaign!

You can see in our 'Where's WELLBY' poster that loneliness is one of the biggest negatives on our wellbeing. There was a big 2019 review from Department for Culture, Media and Sport and What Works Centre for Wellbeing into loneliness. The review identified a gap in the UK open data. And a gap in the UK data is like red rag to a bull for us...so we charged in to take a look working with the National Churches Trust. A thought-provoking read. https://lnkd.in/eB3zCWwM

We've worked in youth for a while now - our first client was NCS and we now train the teams at Girl Guiding and Duke of Edinburgh to do what we do. Rather risky as a business but the fruits of this are plain to see in a new, strong, open and honest impact report for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award. https://lnkd.in/gmZmMawh The issue was always going to be that the kids on DofE were likely to be doing pretty well already - and that's proved to be the case. At the same time, DofE does add significantly to their lives during those crucial formative years. This is a first look at key outcomes like life satisfaction, skills, confidence, resilience and comparing to national data (as a comparison group) for credible results. The DofE are refreshingly open and up front about next steps. They state: - it's an encouraging picture of the impact of DofE participation - but this was a high -level analysis – there is still so much more to explore - we are interested in exploring the impact on young people who report lower than average levels of wellbeing at the beginning of their programme - we’re working to adapt our Impact Measurement Framework for young people in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) settings and prisons and young offender institutions. Thanks as ever to clients who are open to challenge and new ideas - Ruth Marvel OBE, Ellen Whitter and Hannah Mecrow, née Marsden. Frankly, we wouldn't exist without them....! Here's to looking at how these benefits vary across different demographics.

This builds on the work for Sport England on social value where we can already see that helping those with a long-term health conditions or disability to be more active has a greater value. This work for Activity Alliance digs a bit deeper to show the value of light activity. This is all starts to point to the need for what Gus O'Donnell said when reviewing the Sport England model: "Constraints on public spending are severe. This makes it more important than ever to focus our investments on those most in need and where we can make the most difference." We're now starting to understand where to make the most difference and how to go about it. This creates real potential for change and that means progress. Big thanks to Sarah Brown-Fraser and Adam Blaze for the opportunity to work on this stuff. https://lnkd.in/er6GB2yS

We started working with The Duke of Edinburgh's Award back in 2020 to set them up to collect quality wellbeing data. It's all paid off as we've now been able to analyse the stacks of participant responses and value the wellbeing impacts for young people using the HM Treasury measure, our friend and yours, the #WELLBY. Genuine pleasure to work with Hannah Mecrow, née Marsden, Ellen Whitter and the team.

Eat my goal....Our new model of social value for Sport England is out today. Could not be more relevant to the new 10 year plan for the NHS for prevention and community health care! It really has got the lot. A team effort: State of Life put together a consortium with a strong spine and structure - Sheffield Hallam University (big thanks to Girish Ramchandani, Shia Ping Kung); The Manchester Metropolitan University (Professor Larissa Davies). Along with check ins with our old friend Christian Krekel (the Cigarette Smoking Man) at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). And the Sport England directors of football Rob Flatt, Dominique Lammie and Andrew Spiers. New tactics. The major evolution for this model is to shift sport and physical activity towards the standards of evidence and measures that we see in health economics. And this is made possible by the new HM Treasury recommenced WELLBY measure we are such big fans of. No losers but some bigger winners. Another big shift is that we can now see how much more valuable activity is for different groups in society. No-one loses by being more active, it’s good for everyone. But there are some significant winners revealed in this new evidence. - It can be double the wellbeing impact to work with people who are inactive vs those already fairly active. Being physically active rather than inactive generates an annual wellbeing value of £2,500 per adult (while becoming 'fairly active' is £1,200 per adult, per year) - There is a much greater benefit to working with those who are inactive and disabled or with long term health conditions. Around £5,000 per year, per person - It is also more valuable to work with women, children and those will multiple factors of inequality. A marathon not a sprint. This is the start of a three year project and next we can start to look at settings (outdoor vs indoor), regional variation, team sport vs individual fitness. The finishing line. The sprint finish was to show the work to State of Life’s friend Gus O’Donnell. As ever he was spot on in saying: "Constraints on public spending are severe. This makes it more important than ever to focus our investments on those most in need and where we can make the most difference. This new evidence for Sport England starts to point the way" 1-0 up at half time but a long way to go. We'll continue to give 110% and just hope the fans can get behind us in the second half. All the work can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eQxeW4zq

Churches: our National Help Service. This new study builds on the House of Good work in 2020 with the brave team at National Churches Trust. It's a look at churches, of all faiths, from a different lens. That of health and social care. Foodbanks, Drug and Alcohol support and Mental Health groups are all hosted, run by churches in the heart of communities. And these buildings also provide the motivated, caring volunteers. This is frontline social care for people in crisis. This new work uses the WELLBY values as benchmarked to the NHS measure of economic value, the QALY. It shows that Churches provide social care that relieves the immense burden on the NHS by £8.4billion a year. https://lnkd.in/eBXiR_td We may not all believe in God but we can certainly believe in Good. Finally, thanks to authors Allan Little and Jasmine Kazantzis and Sara MacLennan for peer review. Also the team at Lark for the superb summary report; when we need a big idea brought to life in a smart, simple way. They never let us down!

Online harms and children's wellbeing. Well worth a read this one. A very thorough bit of work and big thanks to Nancy Hey, Sara MacLennan, Allan Little and Jasmine Kazantzis for setting it all up and doing such a fine job. And big thanks to the excellent team at Ofcom for a professional project! There is so much in here to learn and apply. https://lnkd.in/eH9Ffeu9

Wellby this and Wellby that. Here’s our one-page explainer of the WELLBY, and how it’s used to calculate the economic value of our wellbeing. https://lnkd.in/eUcysHTX