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Listen
Building Community Well-Being
An Exploration of Themes and Issues
6. Evidence of success: measuring change
The approaches that were being described as effective in improving mental health and well-being suggest the need to reconsider the ways in which we measure performance and evaluate outcomes. What was looked for were authentic measures of progress on the ground, not top-down, managerially driven indicators.
Measures of change: communities
- Local issues drive local planning and strategy
- Dialogue with communities - feedback given and received; creative ways of engaging communities and decision makers; explicit steps to engage young people
- Resources would be matched to local needs
- More affordable housing for local people
- Improvements in local service capacity to support people in the area without relocation
- Improvements in ratings of confidence and self esteem
- Range and sustainability of community initiatives
- Number of local people trained and employed in new developments, including regeneration
- Increase in base-line of services, shops and amenities that people want
- Increase in use of public service facilities and amenities
- Implementation of local policies on transport
- Action to promote debt management
- Steps taken to strengthen networks and connections: bridges and bonds, including intergenerational working
- Effort targeted on excluded groups, to reduce gaps in mental health and well-being
Measures of change: work and employment
- Economic success - full employment, job security
- More quality jobs for local people, less reliance on unskilled/temporary/seasonal employment
- More people getting back into work, faster, following interruptions due to redundancy, illness, etc.
- More employers attending to well-being of employers through workplace policies and practices
- More people remaining in work with the successful development of job retention initiatives
- Drop in stress-related absence rates
Measures of change: children and young people
- Decrease in crime
- Numbers of young people 'hanging round on the streets'
- Children happy to come to school: decrease in truancy
- Decline in drug and alcohol misuse
- Decline in disruptive behaviour among young people in school - often an outward sign of underlying issues
- More apprenticeship places, greater take-up of further education
- Lower rates of presentation to mental health services - lower need
- Young people report decision makers willing to listen and take account of their views and experiences
- There would be confidence within the local systems of services for children and young people that needs were being picked up early and addressed effectively
- Children, young people and their parents would know where to go to get help with a problem
Measures of change: support services
- Meaningful local involvement of people who use services in their development, planning and operation
- Visible signs of improvement in capacity of local services to meet needs: access, timing and location, cultural sensitivity
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