Local government and well-being revisited

 By watchlooksee

Starting in late 2009, my colleagues and I set out to gather the best examples from across English local authorities to demonstrate what ‘taking a well-being approach’ means in practice. The resulting report, The role of local government in promoting well-being, set out a social and economic case for placing the promotion of well-being at the heart of local government activity, and outlined, with the help of a rich set of case studies, key areas of activity required to make this happen.

After initial positive feedback, I couldn’t help wondering what those responsible for leading local authorities would really make of the ideas the report contained. So I was very pleased when, earlier this year, the Local Government Association asked us to convene a series of conversations and workshops to discuss with senior local authority figures the realities, opportunities and challenges involved in aiming to implement the type of actions the report describes. My resulting summer of rich and interesting conversations with senior councilors and local government officers is described in a follow up report, Making it Happen, published today.

Of the many interesting points made during the discussions, what sticks with me most are two questions raised by participants. The first succinctly sets out the challenge to which those of us advocating a well-being focus need to respond: ‘Why would a local authority do anything that was not about improving well-being?’ Well, why would it? After all, local government’s aim is to improve the lives of local people – exactly what the well-being agenda advocates. The suggestion is that talking about well-being adds nothing for people who have already chosen to spend their working lives in local government.

But in fact the conversations provided lots of reasons for thinking that an explicit focus on well-being could play a transformative role in the work of local authorities. Another participant noted that the well-being agenda leads to the second question: ‘What kind of council do we want to be?’. This reflects the power of well-being to link disparate agendas across local government by providing a unifying goal to which different service areas can jointly contribute.

Fully embedding an overarching well-being goal represents a major change to the way in which local government understands itself. Rather than a collection of separate departments each toiling away to meet separate targets and strategic aims, it becomes a unified organization working towards a clear, measurable overall goal, with cross-cutting intermediate outcomes which help to get there. For example, one participant described how it would be possible to develop ‘person-based outcomes across the system’, giving the example of ‘the four readinesses: readiness for school, work, parenting and retirement’, instead of siloed outcomes such as reducing obesity. Another talked about how health and well-being outcomes had driven the development of different specific strategies within his local area, so that, for example, the transport strategy had been transformed by a well-being approach so that it was ‘really a transport and health policy’. Others spoke about a well-being focus helping councils move away from a traditional role simply as a provider of services, and towards a role in facilitating and enabling people to live good lives, based on an understanding of what people need to do this.

So in the end, the conversations convinced me that focusing on well-being has a vitally important place in the work of local government. Fundamentally, it can help re-imagine what a local council is aiming to achieve and how it aims to get there. At a time when local authorities are adjusting to a host of changes including massive cuts to their funding, new responsibilities for public health and new structures in the form of Health and Well-being Boards, this is a necessary and urgent task.