Alliance blogs

Evaluating a complex community initiative like Well London is always going to be a challenge. A What Works Centre for well-being would, Alison Pearce argues, help organisations to network and share information – getting evidence out of the literature and on to the front line.

What drives well-being? Sam Smethers argues that relationships are the key to our well-being and interventions must focus on this if they are to help their clients cope with the challenges they face. Current research focuses on couple relationships, a What Works Centre for Well-being could help collect data on other types of relationships and help to deepen our understanding of their impact on people's well-being.

Children with higher levels of well-being do better academically, according to evidence discussed by Joe Hayman (hyperlink to his person web address), Chief Executive of the PSHE Association. But the balance of accountability in schools is biased towards academic outcomes. We need to change this and have a concerted push to bring schools to account for how they promote the well-being of their students.

Our clients have complex lives and well-being can be both a driver for, and a consequence of the problems clients come to see us about. Understanding how far our services can measure and potentially improve well-being is vital. Evidence, argues Tamsin Shuker, will allow us to understand the needs of our clients, to determine what interventions are most effective in affecting well-being, and demonstrate the value of those interventions to funders (to ensure we can continue to provide them).

The usual Whitehall default towards centralisation should be avoided so that we include more local voices – including politicians - in any What Works Centre for well-being because local relationships are deeper and more long term, there is an opportunity to develop more radical solutions to improving well-being that the sound bite world of Westminster struggles to achieve, argues Professor Mark Gamsu

How dangerous is mental illness? Are young people's job prospects improving? Do prisons work? Megan Clement introduces Hard Evidence; funded by the Alliance, Hard Evidence tackles some of the public policy questions that dominate the news agenda and they’d like to hear your suggestions.

Dr. Warren Pearce asks why, when there is such widespread support for evidence-based policy, is it so hard in practice? The answer, he argues, can be found in an array of definitions used for evidence and the shifting nature of policy that demands different kinds of evidence at different times.

A House of Commons science and technology committee inquiry is looking into the potential benefits of real-time analysis of social media. According to a report for the Alliance, published last year, social media data could play an important role in policy making and public service delivery, Jason Leavey writes.

NICE has recently been joined by some new kids on the block. Some problems are sufficiently wicked to need a few runs rounds of the block. Professor Helen Roberts asks: is there anything to be re-cycled from the evidence centres funded by the ESRC over a decade ago?

Share your voice, join the conversation. The Fund have launched, Your Voice Our Vision - kick-starting an exchange of thoughts, ideas, challenges and opportunities, to inform their plans for 2015 – 2021. Thomas Guiney, from The Big Lottery Fund explains how we can get involved…

On Wednesday 5 February 2014, the Cabinet Office and Nesta announced a new partnership that will take the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT)– the nudge unit – out of government. Geoff Mulgan explains how he hopes Nesta can play its part in taking the work in this partnership, to another level.

There remains a vast chasm between research and policy, partly because the 'wily policy fox' and the 'prickly research hedgehog' rarely work together from the start, according to Adrienne Skelton who leads on evidence at Macmillan Cancer Support. But there are some tips on how we might hit the ‘sweet spot’ between evidence and social policy design.