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Wellbeing: Government Departments and Other Organisations

Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)

DCSF’s work is very much about increasing the wellbeing for the population. It aspires to create opportunity, release potential, and achieve excellence. Its aim for children and young people wellbeing is illustrated by the 5 Every Child Matters outcomes:

  • Be healthy
  • Stay safe
  • Enjoy and achieve
  • Make a positive contribution

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Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)

The aim of DCMS is "to improve the quality of life for all through cultural and sporting activities", thus the work of the department is directly related to increasing wellbeing across the age ranges.

Raising participation in sport and culture contributes towards wellbeing by encouraging social mixing and community cohesion; giving people positive goals in life; and physical activity can improve health. 

One of the department's strategic priorities is to improve access for young people, and it does this through a number of initiatives such as Creative Partnerships and Renaissance in the Regions, and through working closely with other government departments such as DCSF on shared agendas, including the Every Child matters: Change for Children Programme and the shared PSA on childhood obesity.

DCMS shares with DCSF responsibility for policy on children's play which is increasingly recognised as important for children and young people's health, wellbeing and learning.

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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

To take the “Securing the Future”, the 2005 UK sustainable development strategy forward, Defra set up the 'Whitehall Wellbeing Working Group' (W3G) in the autumn of 2005 to steer research, share information, and consider the policy implications of the research and the 'Wellbeing Indicator Group' to advise on the development of wellbeing indicators in December 2006. Defra commissioned a number of research projects on wellbeing in March/April 06, which have now been completed.

Defra’s strategic focus on natural environment policy is built on the understanding that our natural environment – encompassing air, water, land and soil, and biodiversity – is vital to human health and wellbeing. It provides:

  • Clean air, water and food for our basic survival
  • The resources we need for a strong economy
  • A place for recreation, exercise and interaction with nature

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Department of Health

The Department of Health’s overall purpose is “to promote health and wellbeing”. Initiatives are increasingly focussed on the promotion of wellbeing and prevention of ill-health. Key among these are:

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The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills

The Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing project is a two year research project that will report in 2008. It aims to produce a challenging and long-term vision for optimising mental capital and mental wellbeing in the UK in the twenty-first century – both for the benefit of society, and for the individual.

Department for Work and Pensions

Wellbeing is an explicit focus in two policy areas:

The National Assembly for Wales

The National Assembly for Wales Scheme for Sustainable Development Action Plan establishes “Quality of Life” as a primary concern. The Assembly is also considering making a policy commitment to establishing a “genuine health service”, i.e. focussed on keeping people healthy as well as treating illness.

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) has not been formally adopted by the Assembly, but  has been considered as a possible measure to meet the WAG headline sustainable indicator “genuine economic progress, taking account of environmental factors, resources and wellbeing”, to complement Gross Value Added (GVA), a headline indicator of the “level of economic activity”. 

The Scottish Executive (SE)

The Scottish Executive has identified five major policy areas: ‘healthier’, ‘greener’, ‘safer’, ‘smarter’, ‘wealthier and fairer’. Wellbeing is at the heart of the Scottish Executive’s policy objectives. It is identified as part of all major policy areas for example through the continuing work and actions in support of the 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy.

The Scottish Executive has also made health and wellbeing one of their major five themes for Government – ‘healthier’ and has established a Directorate for Health and Wellbeing headed by a senior Minister as Cabinet Secretary. Within ‘healthier’ (health and wellbeing) there is a new emphasis on public health and wellbeing and the need to do more to address inequalities in health and wellbeing and improve health (physical, mental, social).

As one part of this, the Executive has been working on the promotion of mental wellbeing through its National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing. Within this work a set of national indicators for measuring population mental health and wellbeing have been developed. This set of indicators will be used to create a summary profile of mental wellbeing in Scotland, to help track changes over time. Included in this set is a new and validated population measure of positive mental wellbeing, the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale.

The indicators work is being led by NHS Health Scotland and funded by the Scottish Executive. The first set of mental wellbeing indicators will be reporting around October, with the full data set available as far as is possible by the end of the year. This will be published on an annual basis. From 2008, the Executive will be developing a set of national indicators for children’s mental wellbeing (in partnership with others).

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Initiatives at Local Government Level

Local government and its partners, working through Local Strategic Partnerships, have been developing and using indicators of quality of life, wellbeing, and sustainable development in their community strategies and (more recently) their local area agreements. These include objective measures, often drawn from the UK Sustainable Development indicator set, along with subjective wellbeing measures designed to track levels of social capital, trust, and happiness.

Local Area Agreements now provide a framework within which different localities can consult and engage with citizens on what constitutes wellbeing, in areas with different demographies, economic and cultural histories. LAAs allow for such outcomes and targets to be defined and negotiated with central government, and for the resources of all public sector partners to be re-aligned around relevant interventions and services. A number of LAAs feature wellbeing as a prominent theme.

A three year pilot, The Local Wellbeing Project, has been developed by the IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency), the Young Foundation, and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. This involves three local authorities leading the development of good practice in the field: Hertfordshire, Manchester, and South Tyneside. Central government departments and the Audit Commission are also closely involved in this work.

This three year project will test out a series of well-grounded interventions to improve public wellbeing in the three authorities with the aim of pioneering new approaches to the design and delivery of policies and services which could be replicated more widely. The project will focus on three major practical initiatives: emotional resilience for 11 to 13 year olds; developing a guaranteed apprenticeship scheme; and developing a new initiative to increase older people’s resilience. Additional action research strands on neighbourhoods and parenting will be underpinned by work on measurement of the link between wellbeing and environmental sustainability.

The East Midlands Development Agency’s Regional Economic Strategy measures its success against a Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Wellbeing (ISEW). This includes valuations for social and environmental costs and benefits as well as traditional Gross Value Added (GVA) measures of economic growth. For example, the benefits of volunteering are included as well as the social costs of divorce, crime and car accidents.  The measure is currently being rolled out across other regions.

Audit Commission

In August 2005, the Audit Commission, Defra and ODPM published a revised set of local quality of life indicators.  The 2005 set is based on a review of the earlier set of indicators published in 2002, but also reflects new initiatives and indicators such as the government’s 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy and the development of Local Area Agreements, which have changed the environment in which the earlier indicators were set. Unlike previous sets, the current set draws only on existing national indicators which the Audit Commission has made available for all local areas on its Area Profiles website. The Area Profiles website, first launched in October 2005 brings together a range of performance and contextual information on the quality of life and local services.  This along with other guidance provided helps users to paint a rich picture of the quality of life and service provision in a local area.

Sustainable Development Commission (SDC)

The Sustainable Development Commission is carrying out a research project on the relationship between wellbeing and two other aims which have been the focus of policy-makers’ concerns: sustainability and economic growth. The project, “Redefining Prosperity”, is investigating:

  • different visions and versions of what “prosperity” means
  • the question of “decoupling” growth from the sorts of environmental impacts it usually has
  • how the economy would function if a lower priority was given to economic growth, and
  • possible policy implications of the data about what contributes to people’s wellbeing and what doesn’t.

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Updated: 17 August 2007