Environmental Audit CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by New Approaches Community Interest Company

I am writing from an organisation called New Approaches CIC. We are a social enterprise specialising in happiness and wellbeing and enabling positive social change.

We use positive psychology, community engagement, research, project methodologies and offer our services to businesses, Councils, community and social enterprise sector, schools and families. Our values include ones of social inclusion ensuring that our work reaches people who are potentially vulnerable, involving communities in facilitating their own solutions and reinvesting profits with a particular focus on children in care and people in poverty. We also believe that happiness and wellbeing are at the heart of all positive social change. We use evidence based and researched methods as well as building our own research and measuring our own social value.

We are using the emerging field of positive psychology which studies how we can live well, be the best we can be and make the most of our lives. Positive Psychology includes areas such as the development of human strengths, building optimism, hope and resilience, increasing positive emotions such as joy and gratitude, mindfulness, the journey of change and happiness, wellbeing and flourishing.

Summary of Key Points

The Wellbeing Inquiry need to consider Positive Psychology Research in building a national wellbeing strategy which research indicates will reduce mental illness, improve mental and physical health.

There needs to be less focus on academic targets in schools and more focus on communication, resilience, strengths, hopeful and optimistic thinking and wellbeing.

There needs to be support for organisations to measure wellbeing and many public sector orgnaisations lack the expertise.

The data on the four ONS wellbeing questions on “happy yesterday” and “anxious yesterday” seems to contradict each other and difficult to know how to translate findings.

Support for organisations especially Social Enterprise and Voluntary Sector (VCSE) to promote good mental health—reduce bureaucracy in local Council tender processes so that they are more accessible to Social Enterprise, small businesses and Voluntary Sector.

There needs to be a clear national wellbeing strategy with focus on research to show how the 10 domains are associated with each other eg how employment impacts on subjective wellbeing and wellbeing on employment.

Housing Associations have a significant role to play in supporting community wellbeing and businesses and public sector can work together to use positive psychology in business and the community as part of CSR plans.

The research on strengths and positive emotions (Fredricksen’s Broaden and Build Theory for example) shows how Positive Psychology can lead to increased social and human capital.

Introduction about New Approaches and Georgina Clarke

Georgina Clarke set up New Approaches in 2008 with an aim of positive social change. The company transformed into a CIC in June 2013 with a focus on Positive Social Change and Happiness and Wellbeing, using Positive Psychology as a primary tool, and offering training, projects, research and business consultancy. We have five Directors and work in partnership with a number of organisations including Bucks New Uni, where three of our Directors have completed the first year of an MsC in Applied Positive Psychology. Our fourth Director runs a community social enterprise research organization, Iceberg Research, as well as a Social Enterprise to empower and train up homeless people and has a PHD in Social Science. Other organisations we work in partnership with are Action for Happiness, Positive Psychology Resource Centre, NLP4Kids. Our work is mainly commissioned by Councils, Schools, Charities and Government organisations.

Full Set of Recommendations and Comments

Below please find the comments of New Approaches CIC in response to the questions asked by the Wellbeing Inquiry including policy that the government should open up as a result of the wellbeing measures and findings.

There is a growing body of research around the effectiveness and impact of Positive Psychology including the work of Fredricksen, Ryff, Keyes, Linley, Seligman, Peterson and Proctor. The research includes findings that Positive Psychology interventions such as building resilience, applying strengths led ways of working, increasing positive emotions (including mindfulness) leads to improved health, better productivity at work, better academic results, improved life satisfaction and reduced negative outcomes such as substance misuse and anti-social behavior.

While we think it is reassuring that the government is prioritizing wellbeing to such an extent, we at New Approaches feel that more work is needed to improve the wellbeing of the nation and don’t think that there is currently a clear national and local strategy for improving emotional wellbeing.

The data outlined on page 32 of the most recent ONS Measuring Wellbeing Report indicates that 71.1% of the population were “happy yesterday” and 60.1% anxious yesterday. How can we understand these sets of data more—are people happily anxious or anxiously happy? What does the data tell us and what do we need to do? We think more research and debate is needed to respond to these statistics.

Keyes (2010) outlined the presence of mental disorders as being associated with the presence of multiple chronic physical disorders and also the link between reduced mental health and mental disorders. He also described how flourishing individuals report the lowest prevalence of mental disorders. So we feel the government should start to help people to flourish which will then support preventative agenda around reducing mental illness and improving peoples physical health and so will save the NHS money.

The government in our view, should support organisations and individuals who are passionate about preventing suicides, self-harm, poor mental health—there was a sad BBC article this week with some alarming statistics quoted—http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22854301#—13% of 16 year olds have self harmed, the most common type of death for 17 to 34 year olds is suicide. Dick Moore asks why as we do. We need to work together with government on these issues and the governments commissioning process needs to enable organisations such as small businesses, social enteprise and the voluntary sector to help.

We feel particularly in schools there is not enough focus on wellbeing or sufficient understanding by schools that increasing wellbeing is vital to influencing other outcomes such as academic attainment. For instance the government is investing heavily in Pupil Premium and Narrowing the Gap but there seems to be limited understanding by local Councils of the contributing factors to narrowing the achievement gap or the link to wellbeing. There are some Councils who are trailblazing such as Islington who have designed their commissioning outcomes for young people on wellbeing principles and outcomes.

Research indicates that by investing in children’s emotional health, building their resilience and communication skills, and supporting them to understand their strengths leads to greater success at school. Proctor et al (2011) in their paper Very Happy Youths found that interventions focusing on Positive Psychology with a range of young people, had the greatest impact on very unhappy youths and led to other improved outcomes such as better academic success.

We feel that Ofsted and the Department of Education need to be inspecting how schools measure wellbeing and how investment in wellbeing impacts on wider outcomes for the children. With the introduction of the Social Value Act 2012, which puts a duty on Councils to measure and commission based on social value, we feel that the government should then be encouraging all statutory organisations to measure social value. Our experience is that sometimes schools and Councils do not have the expertise to measure change effectively.

We feel that the government needs to invest in social enterprises and the voluntary sector to undertake wellbeing initiatives with people and evidence the change. The tender system is currently not conducive to small businesses and is a barrier to growth for the VCSE sector.

We feel that it is reassuring that the latest Measuring National Wellbeing ONS report outlined interaction between domains such as What we Do and Subjective Wellbeing by projects such as the work with jobseekers tracking their wellbeing. We feel that there needs to be more linkages between each domain and subjective wellbeing. So for instance measuring how subjective wellbeing impacts on domain outcomes like employment, education, health and how the domain outcomes impact on the Subjective Wellbeing domain.

We feel that although the data and wheel of measures are helpful, that qualitative research and more quantitative research would be helpful to understand more about the relationship between outcomes and subjective wellbeing. We would like to see Positive Psychology interventions measured to see how they increase peoples wellbeing and also how this increase in wellbeing leads to an impact on other domain outcomes. So in schools, how an increase in wellbeing leads to reduced bullying, improved academic attainment, reduced truancy etc.

We feel that the evidence based research tools for measuring wellbeing should be considered and that organisations should be encouraged and trained to use these. Measures such as Carol Ryff’s six measures of wellbeing including areas such as quality ties to others which ties into the government’s aim to increase social capital. At New Approaches we are looking to use tools such as Ryff’s six measures within our wellbeing interventions to identify changes and also include qualitative and participatory action research. We feel social enterprise, voluntary and statutory sector should be supported and trained to use these tools effectively and gather data to identify what has worked perhaps in the new What Works Centres.

We feel that wellbeing initiatives should be targeted and measured through initiatives such as Troubled Families and reach the most vulnerable groups in society.

We feel that Positive Psychology interventions can support people in both Public and Private sector and that initiatives should seek opportunities to involve both. So for instance we are currently working with Ways into Work who support people with disabilities into work. They are employed by the Council but their clients are people with disabilities and Private employers. Based on the research on strengths based recruitment and application in the workplace, interventions such as strengths led recruitment can help to change employers mindsets about recruitment which in turn will encourage them to be more inclusive.

We feel that Housing Associations have a significant role to play in increasing peoples wellbeing and often access vulnerable people and families. We would like more responsibility and funding directed to Housing Associations to introduce both innovative and evidence based initiatives to increase wellbeing and to be supported to measure social value.

We would like to see Ofsted and inspectors measuring success of Councils, Children’s Centres, Schools on how well they measure wellbeing and its impact on other outcomes and it should be present in all organizational strategies such as child poverty, inclusion, school improvement, narrowing the gap, adult social care, parks and countryside etc. It could be linked to inspections to see how well Councils and organisations deliver multi agency and joined up approaches to commissioning and partnerships.

The ONS and government describe wellbeing as comprising four capitals. Research shows that Positive Psychology initiatives impact on both social and human capital. For instance Fredricksen’s Broaden and Build theory shows how building positive emotions such as joy and gratitude and love and kindness builds our long term resources and supports better relationships and interactions such as social, psychological and physical resources.

The strengths research shows how by identifying peoples strengths and setting goals that play to their strengths creates skills and knowledge and competencies being put to better use and leads to better motivation of workforces or pupils/students and improved productivity and results. So these approaches therefore support the increase in human capital.

References

Linley, A (2008). Average to A+ Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others, Coventry, CAPP Press

Proctor et al (2009). Very Happy Youths: Benefits of Very High Life

Satisfaction Among Adolescents, Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Algoe, SB, Fredrickson, B, Chow, S, (2011). The Future of Emotions Research withinPositive Psychology, Oxford University Press

Fredrickson, B, Joiner, T (2002). Positive Emotions Trigger Upward Spirals Toward Emotional Wellbeing, Michigan and Florida, Psychological Science, Vol 13, No. 2

Ryff, C D, & Keyes C L M (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Keyes, C L M (2007). Promoting and Protecting Mental Health as Flourishing. American Psychological Association: American Psychologist Vol. 62, No. 2, p95–108.

Seligman, M E P, Steen, T A, Park, N, & Peterson, C (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410–421

Petersen, Christopher. “The future of optimism.” American Psychologist. Vol 55 (1).(2000): Web

13 June 2013