Being Well Together explains the methodology behind the first UK-wide Community Wellbeing Index created by the Coop and the Young Foundation.
Community wellbeing
‘Wellbeing’ has been described as “all the things people need in order to lead a good life”. The concept of ‘community wellbeing’ is less developed than the concept of personal wellbeing. In Being Well Together, community wellbeing is defined as “a collective feeling of leading a ‘good life’, shared and created by people and organisations. Community
wellbeing is more than the sum of people’s individual wellbeing; it is the relationships between people and with place“.
People, place and relationships
Building on this concept of community wellbeing, Being Well Together sets-out a model of community wellbeing comprising of three key pillars; people, place and relationships. Nesting within each of these inter-lapping key pillars
are nine domains of community wellbeing that include characteristics such as economy, work & employment; culture, heritage and leisure; relationships & trust.
UK Community Wellbeing Index
Being Well Together explains how using this structure, indicators were selected for each domain that represent the best data available at a neighbourhood level and the aspirations of communities consulted. The result is the first UK-wide indicator measuring community wellbeing in 28,317 neighbourhoods.
Look-up your community’s index
Cleverly, the whole process has been simplified so that you can look-up the index for your community -or any other community- on the associated Community Wellbeing website. All you have to do is enter a postcode and the web site will generate a series of benchmarked indices for you as well as a downloadable report.
Place-based use
As Being Well Together explains, the intention is that “for anyone looking at more place-based approaches to funding and interventions it provides a valuable baseline -and many opportunities to extend, evolve and bring in new data, not least from communities themselves.” For town centre regeneration this provides valuable context about wider issues and the chance to reflect on inter-relationships and plan accordingly.
More details
Download a free copy of Being Well Together or look-up the Community Wellbeing Index for your town.
