Big Lottery Fund

The Big Lottery Fund (BIG) is funding a £160 million England-wide funding programme that is aiming to improve the well-being of groups who experience high levels of need. BIG believes well-being to be a holistic term that describes more than just the absence of ill health and  includes positive mental health, good physical health and good eating habits as well as strong social networks.

We are evaluating the Well-being Programme to enable us to understand if and how our funding is making a difference to the lives of the thousands of people participating in projects that we are supporting through the programme.

We have commissioned the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and the New Economics Foundation (nef) to evaluate the impact of our Well-being funding programme.

The evaluation aims to measure a person’s well-being when they first visit a project, when they leave a project and three months after they have finished participating in a project. As we analyse this data, we are establishing the impact of different types of projects and measuring how an individual’s well-being has changed as a result of participating in different types of projects. The evaluation will use factor analysis to critically review the relationships between different components of well-being for different groups of people.

The first year evaluation report shows that:

• Projects are successfully targeting beneficiaries with below average levels of well-being
• The majority of people participating in projects are not meeting recommended government five-a-day targets when they first visit a project. On average, participants are eating 3 pieces of fruit and/or vegetables each day.
• Although most respondents report a positive attitude towards healthy food, this does not translate into healthy cooking or eating habits.
• 64 per cent of people who participate in a well-being projects show symptoms of depression when they first join a project.
• Older people who participate in well-being projects are reporting better levels of mental health and healthier eating habits than younger people.

• Read the full Well-being evaluation report Based on the latest research and anticipated outcomes of the Well-being Programme, the overall aims of the national well-being evaluation are to: evaluate the overall impact o...
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• Read the Well-being evaluation summary report If and how projects are improving people’s mental health, increasing participation in physical activity, encouraging healthy eating patterns and increasing levels of social we...
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We have shared our approach to the evaluation widely this year, at conferences including the European Positive Psychology Conference, the Association of Charitable Funders and the VSSN/NCVO Researching the Voluntary Sector Conference.  There has been lots of interest in the way we are measuring mental well-being in particular, using standardised questionnaires which help us to track changes in the well-being of project participants over time.

The next stage of the evaluation will look at how projects have had an impact on people participating in the projects. We will be publishing our latest findings in early 2011.  In the meantime you may be interested in the following resources below.

Well-being policy papers:

We regularly publish papers called Well-being Matters which explore the links between wellbeing and different areas of public policy. Please see below for our previously published papers, and watch this space for the next one – Well-being and the Big Society.

• Well-being Matters Issue 1: What do we mean by ‘well-being’? 
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• Well-being Matters Issue 2: Well-being and the Department of Health strategy ‘New Visions’ 
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• Well-being Matters Issue 3: Well-being and the natural environment 
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Finally, all the portfolios that we have funded are undertaking their own in-depth evaluations.  A number of the portfolios are due to end soon and will be presenting their findings at conferences.  If you are interested in hearing more, please contact Sally Taylor for more details.

Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.