November

This month the papers appear to have adopted William Beveridge’s age-old idiom of ‘from the cradle to the grave’ in their approach to wellbeing. The Mirror ran a story on how Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and the Home Secretary Theresa May plan to ‘deglamorise’ the allure of gang culture through the implementation of tougher sentences for gang related crime whilst simultaneously offering parents opportunities to improve their parenting skills. Looking towards Strathcylde police forces’ recent success in tackling gang related crime, the government has formulated an approach that seeks to bring ‘together health visitors, social services, schools and law enforcement’ in a multi-faceted approach that aims to end youth crime. Going a step further than his Celtic counterparts, Iain Duncan Smith proposes a more interventionist approach that seeks to help families deal with troubled children from an early age. Health visitors are being encouraged to utilise their home-based access to families to identify those children most lacking in basic developmental skills from an early age. Once identified, these families will be given help and training on parenting methods that should, in turn, allow children to reach their ‘psychological, emotional [and] intellectual’ milestones within the supportive environment of a strong familial unit. The thinking behind the method echoes the belief that children who are exposed to positive and supportive parental role models will be less likely to seek the solstice of gang life in later life.

The state of wellbeing in the workplace posed an interesting point of debate for The Guardian. Reporting on the findings of a roundtable discussion, the paper found that old-fashioned traditional benefit packages were simply not cutting the mustard with modern employers who were looking for more ‘lifestyle’ based benefits. Whilst not every company may follow Google’s lead in installing a ‘slide which leads into the staff dining hall’, offering a more flexible approach to working hours, childcare and holidays would ensure businesses secure greater happiness, productivity and experience less instances of workplace related ill mental health. As within the family unit, positive role models were found to have a positive impact on the wellbeing of employers with the findings suggesting that in instances where senior management have been seen to lead by example there has been ‘a significant impact on employee benefit engagement’. Targeted benefit packages were also hailed as beneficiary to employee wellbeing, with one participant declaring the need for an end to the ‘one size fits all’ approach of the traditional benefit packages in favour of a more innovative approach, such as offering graduate employees packages that help them to tackle their student debts. Flexible working was also praised as a policy that benefits both employer and employee with figures suggesting a £3.50 return for every £1 spent implementing flexible working due to the subsequent increased productivity of staff. It appears that work based wellbeing stems from small, targeted changes rather than radical overhaul and in making employers feel valued as individuals rather than merely part of a larger faceless workforce.

From youth, to work and now onto the elderly. Lottery funded research project, Shaping Our Age, has reported that elderly people believe their personal wellbeing is directly affected through their relationships with their ‘partners, family, friends’ and local communities. Listening to elderly people’s views regarding their own wellbeing provides a true and reflective account of their desires and expectations and it appears that listening itself is a large and underappreciated factor. The report, as discussed on egovmonitor.com, finds that elderly people wish to be involved in decisions that directly affect their psychological and physical wellbeing but have increasingly found themselves being the subjects of dictation rather than discussion. The report suggests that there ‘is a strong message that achieving well-being is about enabling and supporting people to do what they want to do’ rather than stepping in an creating solutions for them. Listening to the needs and concerns of the elderly should hopefully allow them to become ‘shapers of their own sense of well-being’ in turn allowing them to become ‘active contributors to society’.

Whilst it may be true that we all have a voice, the prevailing message of November appears to be we all must learn to listen to each other too.