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The wellbeing and happiness of citizens has been regarded as the Holy Grail for public services for many years. Marcia Brophy claims it can be a practical policy goal. Democratic governments have always been interested in actions which might enhance the wellbeing of their citizens. "The recent recession might have been expected to diminish interest in wellbeing, which could have been seen as a luxury for times of plenty. Instead, it has generated a sharper focus on what public spending does to influence wellbeing, how to make people resilient..." But, while in the past, this was a broad and unfocused goal, today, there is increasing understanding, nationally and internationally, about what actually shapes wellbeing. The state of happiness is a major new report, launched this week by the Young Foundation and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), summarising the results of practical projects carried out across the UK – from teaching resilience to children in schools, to promoting neighbourliness – and surveying the current state of play in public policy. Many initiatives around the world testify to the growing importance of wellbeing as an explicit goal of policy, including [French president] President Nicolas Sarkozy's commission into measuring progress, the growing reorientation of healthcare towards wellbeing in many countries, and moves by national governments including Canada, Australia and the UK to invest in different ways to measure wellbeing. The recent recession might have been expected to diminish interest in wellbeing, which could have been seen as a luxury for times of plenty. Instead, it has generated a sharper focus on what public spending does to influence wellbeing, how to make people resilient, and how to mitigate the factors which harm wellbeing. However, serious work on policy options has lagged behind academic analysis of what causes happiness. There is still little solid experience of reshaping welfare, education and other fields of government action to promote wellbeing. The ‘Local wellbeing project' has been one attempt to fill the gap – a partnership between the Young Foundation, Professor Lord Richard Layard at the London School of Economics (LSE), the Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA), and three leading local authorities – Hertfordshire CC, Manchester City Council, and South Tyneside MBC. It has shown that wellbeing can be made a practical policy goal, both nationally and locally, and that it provides a very different way of thinking about changing needs than traditional approaches. The Local wellbeing project focused on five strands – 11 to 13-year-olds; apprenticeships; parenting; neighbourhoods; and older people – and two underpinning themes – measurement and environmental sustainability. These strands developed out of discussions with the local government partners to pinpoint where they felt that they had greatest traction on wellbeing, and which chimed with political and strategic priorities in their areas. A key aim of the project was to develop our understanding of the ways the mainstream activities of local authorities and their key partners could increase wellbeing. The project has demonstrated how an emphasis on wellbeing in schools can be used as part of wider strategies to improve attainment and behaviour; how building social networks can increase wellbeing at the local level to underpin community engagement; how wellbeing can be used tactically to encourage pro-environmental behaviour; how a wellbeing focus can improve the impact of parenting programmes; and how wellbeing can help older people live independently in the community for longer. As the recession forces difficult public spending choices, services focused on wellbeing are delivering widespread economic and social benefits, especially to children. One of our projects was based on three years' in-depth pilots with our three local authority partners. This project showed where wellbeing and resilience were made a focus within schools, through the UK Resilience Programme. Some of the early outcomes were better motivated and happier children, overall, with more impact on pupils who had higher levels of anxiety and depression, and better motivated teachers, with improved relationships with pupils. As one teacher from St Joseph's RC Comprehensive School, South Tyneside, who has been working with her pupils on the UK resilience programme says: ‘If only the whole school staff could do the course, it would not only benefit the pupils but the adults would be happier too.' The state of happiness also drew on 20 years of research from the UK and internationally, and found growing numbers of examples which showed that where programmes focused on wellbeing, communities could benefit from outcomes, such as reduced crime, improved public health, less absenteeism from work, and more sustainable choices about transport. We know that governments cannot ‘make people happy' – but they can and should create the conditions in which they are more likely to be happy, and this report shows the way to start. Marcia Brophy is co-author of the report, and programme leader at the Young Foundation. The full report The state of happiness is now available in pdf format from the Young Foundation website at www.youngfoundation.org

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WHITEHALL

The Holy Grail of happiness

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