Actif Woods Wales - Final Evaluation of April 2013-March 2016 project phase

Dr. Kate Hamilton (klh.learning@gmail.com) -

former Research & Training Officer for Coed Lleol/Actif Woods Wales June 2016

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................... 2

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Project Achievements & Impact .............................................................................................. 4 a. Improving Participants’ Health & Wellbeing ................................................................................ 4

i. Quantitative data gathered through project monitoring .................................................................... 5 ii. Qualitative data gathered through project monitoring ..................................................................... 6 iii. Secondary analysis of quantiative data by Bangor University ...................................................... 9 iv. Independent study of Actif Woods impacts by Cardiff Met ........................................................... 11 v. Health impact Assessment screening by WHIASU (Public Health Wales) ............................... 12

b. Building Capacities .............................................................................................................................. 13 i. Social Forestry OCN.......................................................................................................................................... 13 ii. Skillshare and other skills training ........................................................................................................... 14 iii. Partnership development ........................................................................................................................... 16 iv. Volunteers.......................................................................................................................................................... 18

c. Raising awareness of the benefits of woodlands for wellbeing .......................................... 18 i. External events .................................................................................................................................................. 19 ii. Research Collaborations ............................................................................................................................... 20 iii. Outreach to Health and Social Care Providers ................................................................................... 20

d. Improving Woodlands for the Benefit of Local Communities ............................................. 21

3. Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 22 a. Learn the lessons ................................................................................................................................. 22 b. Targetting and outreach ................................................................................................................... 23 c. Measuring health and wellbeing .................................................................................................... 24 d. Partnership and relationship building realities ...................................................................... 25 e. Social forestry learning ..................................................................................................................... 27

4. Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 28

5. Annexes ........................................................................................................................................ 29 1. Recommendations from Team Evaluation Workshop ........................................................... 29 2. Table: Outcomes, Indicators, Targets and Actuals for Actif Woods Wales April 2013-March 2016 ................................................................................................................................................. 31

Executive Summary Actif Woods Wales is a project delivered by Coed Lleol, the Welsh arm of the Small Woods Association, which aims to improve people's health and wellbeing by involving them in diverse woodlands-based activities. This evaluation covers the period from April 2013-March 2016 during which time the project has been supported primarily through a grant from the Big Lottery Fund People and Places scheme, with match funding from NRW and other sources. Over the last 3 years, Actif Woods has been successful in reaching over 1,000 participants across Wales and delivering over 1,400 sessions, with wide-ranging positive impacts on participants' health and wellbeing. The project has also experimented with and generated a significant amount of learning and grounded good practice about how to assess improved wellbeing in woodland contexts which is now being carried forward. At the same time the project has developed good practice and built significant capacities in local organisations and independent activity leaders regarding how to deliver wellbeing activities in woodlands. It has developed appropriate training modules which are now being rolled out and shared more widely across both the forestry/woodland/environment and health/social care/wellbeing sectors. It has also catalysed ideas around creation of a social forestry learning community which would enrich this area of work and incubate further capacity building opportunities. Actif Woods has had broader impact by sharing experiences and lessons learned openly with an increasing array of interested stakeholders, including research, policy and practitioner communities. Through this it seems to be making a valuable contribution to deeper understandings of green care and the social value of natural environments, and to building momentum for such approaches to be adopted at scale in Wales and further afield. Finally, the project has carried out woodland improvements in the sites visited, and encouraged participants who may not otherwise access woodlands to do so. There is scope to expand and deepen this part of the approach in future. A number of themes for further reflection are identified including:

Taking some dedicated time to learn deeper lessons from the project even while follow-on initiatives are already taking shape;

Reviewing the project's approach to targetting, building on Actif Woods Wales' very broad appeal, evidence about its progressive and cross-cutting impacts on participants, and experience of engaging with health and social care professionals;

Further innovating with approaches to measuring health and wellbeing in meaningful, person-centred and integrative ways;

Streamlining and re-focusing approaches to partnership, in order to achieve long-term capacity goals;

and evolving a more consistent and confident framing of Social Forestry, and of wellbeing activities in woodlands as part of that, to help build the field and pursue longer-term strategic aims.

Specific operational recommendations are also offered, some of which are already in action as the project continues to evolve.

1. Introduction This evaluation covers the 2013-16 phase of Actif Woods Wales, defined by a 3 year grant from the Big Lottery Fund People and Places scheme which provided the core financial support for the project over this period. This funding was matched by other funding from Natural Resources Wales (both funds committed by CCW and Forestry Commission Wales prior to the creation of NRW, and a subsequent partnership agreement with NRW which runs until 2018) and an array of local funders including AONBs (Anglesey, Clwydian and Dee Valley), Sport Wales, Neath Port Talbot County Council, Ceredigion County Council, Mynydd Y Betws Wind Farm Fund, Mind Your Heart, Pfizer Foundation, and Welsh Government. The original agreement with Big Lottery was that the project would have external evaluations at the mid-term and final stages, based on appointment of an external evaluator at the start of the project to set up appropriate measures and monitoring systems for use throughout the project. In the event the opportunity arose to appoint an evaluator onto the staff team as Research & Training Officer so, with agreement from the Steering Group this role was internalised. Because of this the final evaluation has been compiled by the (former) RTO and forms more of an internal self-evaluation than an external one, with the agreement of the Big Lottery. Nonetheless external scrutiny of the project has been sought at various stages and in various forms throughout the life of the project, and this final evaluation report draws where relevant on these sources including:

Outputs of a whole-team self-evaluation workshop conducted in March 2016 by Steve Evison of Resources 4 Change, who also carried out the organizational review of Small Woods, Coed Lleol’s parent organization;

Report on the Mid Term Evaluation conducted in 2014 by an external evaluator, Sue Pritchard of SuLeis;

Feedback and suggestions from a series of multi-stakeholder workshops carried out in the final months of the project (Feb-Mar 2016);

Insights from an Appreciative Inquiry exercise carried out with the core team by Jan Batty of Hywel Dda Health Board's public health team in March 2016;

Findings and recommendations from a Health Impact Assessment screening exercise carried out with the staff team by Lee Parry Williams and Nerys Edmonds of Public Health Wales (WHIASU) in June 2015;

Secondary analysis of Actif Woods data by students from Bangor University, under the supervision of Professor Val Morrison, to produce statistically robust analysis of the project's quantitative monitoring data;

Independent research into Actif Woods impacts by a Masters student from Cardiff Metropolitan University, under the supervision of Dr Debbie Clayton and Dr Jemma Hawkins (Cardiff University).

The report should therefore be read as an internal perspective on a mix of both internal and external findings about Actif Woods Wales. Please note, though, that it is just an evaluation of the project and not a fuller review of either Coed Lleol as an organisation or the state of social forestry, green care and social prescribing in Wales as a whole. A few pointers on the former are included in Annex 1 (excerpt from a write up of the evaluation workshop

mentioned above); the latter is a much bigger subject area which is beyond this organisation's scope or remit, but which we would be delighted to contribute to, should such a piece of work be done in future.

2. Project Achievements & Impact Actif Woods has been systematically reported upon in terms of progress against the specific outcomes, indicators and targets agreed with Big Lottery and other funders, through regular routine project reporting. In a nutshell it has succeeded. Some targets have been revised because the starting assumptions underpinning them have proven not to be reasonable, or not to best support meaningful impact. However these changes have been extensively discussed and well-documented throughout the life of the project, and reflect agreement between the project team, Steering Group and funders in light of lessons learned along the way and what constitutes most meaningful impact overall. Anyway downward revision of expectations in some areas has been offset by the project substantially exceeding targets in other areas so on balance it remains fair to say that it has been a successful project. Further, revisions to specific aspects of the intervention approach, objectives set and methods for monitoring them have already been made, and are reflected in how the follow-on phase of the project, already under way, has been designed. This evaluation report therefore focuses less on whether or not specific outcomes have been achieved, but more on some of the nuances and unexpected developments in how these achievements have come about in practice and how far they go.

a. Improving Participants’ Health & Wellbeing Demonstrating plausible impact on health and wellbeing has been the Holy Grail of this project, in that it is inherently difficult to find but highly prized because it underpins the logic for all the other outcomes. That is, without being able to show that people benefit from woodland based activities there is no point in investing in other agendas such as building capacities to do it, or trying to persuade health practitioners that this is something they should get involved in. Like the mythical quest it has at times felt impossibly challenging, so it became a rather dominant focus of efforts and resources to monitor and evaluate the project. This will be reflected in the length of this section relative to everything else in the report but will hopefully also inform and account for issues which are raised in later sections. Of the four project outcome areas, this was the one that was most difficult to measure. In terms of the specific indicators and targets agreed it has been impossible to prove impact at the specified level, but this is primarily because of challenges to gathering data on the required scale. The various forms of data we do have tend to show significant positive impacts, it is just insufficient in quantity and consistency to link it directly to a specified number of individuals who have better health as a result. So, the basic finding here is - and has always been - that we have good reason to believe the project has achieved positive impact on health and wellbeing, but we cannot show this in the ways that were anticipated. This section will review 5 distinct elements of how we have sought to understand and verify our impact on health and wellbeing outcomes:

i. Quantitative data gathered through project monitoring

ii. Qualitative data gathered through project monitoring iii. Secondary analysis of quantitative data by Bangor University iv. Independent study of Actif Woods impacts by Cardiff Metropolitan University v. Health Impact Assessment screening by WHIASU (Public Health Wales)

i. Quantitative data gathered through project monitoring The project's indicator framework was primarily built around proxy measures for health improvement such as regularity and frequency of attendance at Actif Woods sessions. This is not very satisfying in some ways but is quite legitimate given the bodies of evidence that already exist around how nature exposure, woodland environments, physical activity, group participation, learning and so on can contribute to health and wellbeing. Tracking attendance is relatively straightforward (bar some technical quirks with how the project database has handled contradictory or unexpected information) and so we have been able to show that the project:

reached over 1,000 participants,

who between them clocked up over 9,000 attendances,

across more than 1,400 sessions that were held. In comparison with initial assumptions the project has reached fewer people than expected but more of these have remained regular attendees over longer periods of time. Also, as the project developed, attendance has not always been limited to membership of a single specific group but has sometimes straddled different groups and different activities. The details behind these observations have been discussed extensively in routine project reports but, in brief, have been agreed by the Steering Group as being essentially positive for impact and therefore acceptable deviations from what was expected. Aside from the proxy measures a priority from the outset of the project was to try to gather direct quantitative evidence of health improvement using 'medically accepted' methods. This meant using one or a number of established tools which have been validated as robust measures for assessing changes in self-reported (subjective) wellbeing, and incorporating these into a questionnaire administered to individual participants at regular intervals. Specific challenges in developing the questionnaire were: finding measures that would be appropriate and relevant to all of Actif Woods' very diverse participant group; sensitive enough to register change on the scale participants could reasonably be expected to experience; and keeping the questionnaire length to no more than 2 sides of A4 (for ease of both data gathering and data entry). The final selection of questions was arrived at through both desk research and some pilot testing in two of the project areas, and included a standard physical activity question and the short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Initial hopes were that questionnaires could be administered electronically either prior to or at activity sessions, but for a number of reasons this did not prove to be possible given the realities of the project (not least limited internet and mobile phone signal in many areas where activities take place, and the fact that the database itself was only being constructed and finalised whilst the project was already underway). This was challenging for those involved in administering questionnaires as it created extra data entry work, it was

logistically rather challenging in many of the project sites, and also affected how effective one of the selected questions was because it made it difficult for participants to make effective comparisons over time. Doing everything on paper also contributed to challenges with ensuring participants completed questionnaires at the required intervals (nominally 3 monthly), which was already difficult because participants join and attend project activities at different and unpredictable intervals. These limitations have been documented transparently and extensively throughout the project so will not be discussed further here. In summary, though, it proved impossible to do any meaningful or robust analysis of the quantitative health data until we were offered the opportunity to share it with Bangor University who could treat it in a more sophisticated way. See section iii below.

ii. Qualitative data gathered through project monitoring Alongside the quantitative data discussed above project monitoring has also sought qualitative insights from participants in order to understand their experiences and any impacts in more detail and with more context. Some of this has been gathered through the questionnaire, which included a couple of open-ended questions as well as the tick box and numerical scale questions. In addition we have invited participants to give us narrative data in the form of personal stories, interviews, video talking heads, group discussions and other formats. From the questionnaires, the two key observations emerging from the data have been consistent throughout the 3 years (although obviously the scale of the data has grown over time):

Firstly, participants in Actif Woods have a very wide array of health conditions, including rather serious and fairly trivial issues - but a substantial proportion do not consider themselves to have any health concerns at all when directly asked. This suggests that the activities we offer are valuable to and valued by all sorts of people, and may not always have anything to do with specific illnesses or health challenges;

Secondly, participants' incentives for attending (motivation for first attending, and what they feel they are gaining from continuing to attend) are multiple and overlapping - relating to a mix of health gains, social gains, and being in a natural environment. Within this it is striking how important social considerations are: this is interesting not just because it gives participants more reason to turn up each week, but also because research shows that social connectedness is a direct predictor of health in itself.

These observations give us important insight into how health and wellbeing are experienced by participants and therefore what improvement might look like. It may take many different forms and be improved or sustained in many different ways, justifying the need to look well beyond change in specified health conditions for evidence that this kind of programme is effective. This echoes findings in the broader literature on health and wellbeing - for instance underpinning the 5 Ways to Wellbeing framework - and is picked up again later in the report. Many of those involved in the project assert that the best evidence that participants are benefitting is that they return again and again to Actif Woods activities even when they have many quite compelling excuses not to, and there is some validity to this. The narrative data has been used extensively during the project in the form of brief quotes to illustrate what we do, often alongside photos from our activities. This is always impactful, stimulating interesting and thoughtful discussions and inviting people to engage with what is

on offer in a deeper way than simply looking at facts and figures. Although it is often written off as too anecdotal or personal to be useful as evidence there is a case for saying it is in many ways better evidence than the quantitative data due to the 'ecological validity' of people putting their experiences into a specific context. There are also many interesting themes that emerge from across a diverse enough swathe of the Actif Woods population that they must have some authenticity as shared responses to the experience. The following is a brief summary of some of those themes:

Key themes in the narrative data: The impact is holistic, embracing physical, mental, emotional and social wellbeing (as indicated above). In particular, social connection is hugely important to participants who mention factors such as: the opportunity to walk with others; chances to meet people with similar issues and/or similar interests; the nurturing nature of being part of a supported group; overcoming loss and loneliness in other areas of their lives, and learning to interact with other people safely and comfortably. The role of activity leaders is absolutely paramount, particularly their soft skills and ability to deal with the diverse and dynamic needs of participants in a confident, friendly and flexible way. Obviously leader's technical capacities and skills are also highly valued, and inspire participants' confidence to do things that they might not otherwise have considered doing, but it is important to recognise the importance of leaders' more personal and human attributes - and interesting to reflect on how this compares with many people's experience of health care or social care in other contexts. A common response to Actif Woods is that participants overcome their own limitations and feel more powerful in any of a number of ways: for instance getting comfortable with going out in bad weather, making physical effort, overcoming or living with serious illness, challenging negative self-perceptions such as being clumsy or hopeless, growing in confidence and learning to trust others. This is echoed by observations about how attending the sessions is a constructive and positive personal act - preventing things from becoming worse, finding motivation, and 'doing myself some good'. Engaging with nature is obviously a key feature of the project and strikes chords with participants, whether they consider themselves nature-lovers or are exeriencing it for the first time. Participants tell stories about everything from hearing birdsong and using natural materials to the pleasure of restoring or putting something back into nature, feeling connected to natural cycles, and tapping into the power and the perspective that the scale of natural forces offers. Being outside in the woods is a dynamic, ever-changing experience which is endlessly fascinating and pleasingly 'wild'. Participants' stories frequently mention learning as a positive outcome of their experience, whether this is about nature, learning woodland skills or life skills such as how to interact with others, or about the place. Deepening a sense of place through learning about local history and culture, sharing local knowledge, and simply appreciating natural spaces and quiet spots close to home are some of the unexpected bonuses that arise for participants. There are also many accounts of knock-on impacts on participants' lives which are inevitably

individual and very varied, but which can obviously have huge significance for the people concerned. Some of the impacts mentioned in the narrative data include:

Bridging personal and professional worlds - specifically, we have accounts of people joining for personal reasons and finding it so useful they then bring clients who they work with in a professional capacity (e.g. in youth offending); and of people attending in a professional capacity (e.g. as a support worker) and continuing to attend independently because of the direct personal benefits;

Participants advancing their self-development by starting training, volunteering, getting jobs or changing careers as a result of experiences they've had with Actif Woods;

Introducing their children to new activities and parenting in different ways;

Setting up support groups or self-help groups for other people - e.g. groups for former veterans and for epilepsy awareness in Neath Port Talbot.

These are in addition to more expected impacts such as better sleep, new friendships, becoming active enough to go to the gym, getting creative inspiration and so on, any of which can also be life-changing for the people concerned. A final theme is that this kind of activity is accessible to all (or can be made so), and that everyone who participates benefits in some form: this includes support workers, activity leaders, and people who come along 'just to see'. Whether people are fit or not, well or not, socially capable or not, and whether they need to get energised or calm down, be more focused or chill out, spend time with others or be comfortable alone, they seem to get something that they need from the experience. This suggests that the type of activities offered by Actif Woods are both universally valuable and levelling. This is echoed by what emerges from other sources of evidence about its impact.

iii. Secondary analysis of quantiative data by Bangor University During 2015-16 Actif Woods was fortunate to be offered the opportunity to have its quantitative monitoring data reviewed and analysed by the Psychology Department at Bangor University. This took the form of a final-year project for two students, Holly Eick and Fatema Sultana, working under the expert supervision of Professor Val Morrison. Using accepted scientific protocols and methods the students were able to clean up and organise the project's rather gappy and inconsistent data set (see above) and run a number of queries to analyse it rigorously. Although the final usable data set was small it was sufficient to produce some significant results about the impact of Actif Woods Wales on participants. These are that:

Participants' physical activity and mental wellbeing show a statistically significant improvement;

(Participants' overall health and the impact of their health issues on their lives also appear to improve, although the relationship is not statistically significant);

The impact is greatest for those who start out with lower health and wellbeing: i.e. the impact is progressive;

There is possibly a gender distinction to these impacts, with women benefitting a little more than men, but this may be explained by known differences in how women and mean report their health rather than an actual difference in the impacts.

It is important to note several caveats to these findings: Firstly, statistical significance is not necessarily indicative of clinical significance: that is, finding statistically significant relationships does not in itself establish a health impact that constitutes improvement or compares with other interventions. Having said that, the increase in activity levels of >1 day (i.e. an increase of more than one day a week on which the participants are active for at least 30 minutes) seems quite significant from a common sense point of view, given that it moves the average from 3.5 days/week to 4.6 days/week (the guidelines for basic good health being 5 days/week) - and bearing in mind the Welsh population's generally poor levels of physical activity (as reported by the British Heart Foundation). Movement on the mental health measures (SWEMWBS) was proportionally smaller (from 25.1 to 27.5 out of a possible 35) and represented a shift from an already moderate-to-high level of wellbeing at baseline. However advice from the Professor involved is that there is no established norm for how much movement on this scale is considered clinically significant and that research showing roughly comparable increases in other studies seems to be generally taken seriously. It is also clear that, over all the measures analysed, the changes noted in health, mental wellbeing, physical activity and the impact of health issues on people's lives are broadly consistent with each other, suggesting that the question set as a whole is robust. So although these results only show relatively small changes it does seem that the changes observed are capturing something meaningful about participants' health. Other caveats relate to the sample size and type:

By the time missing and nonsensical data was removed the sample size reduced to between 5-10% of all participants on the database (varying slightly between measures) so the findings do not by any means derive from a critical mass of participants;

It is impossible to firmly establish enough characteristics of this sample (e.g. gender, age, reasons for attending, which groups they attended) to know whether or not it is broadly representative of the Actif Woods Wales population as a whole. Therefore results cannot reliably be extrapolated to the whole project;

The analysis could only consider change from baseline to T1 (i.e. the first follow up questionnaire completed after baseline) as there were insufficient numbers of results across subsequent time periods so it does not capture whether benefits are sustained, increase or decrease through continued attendance;

Further, the actual timing and period elapsed between baseline and T1 varied widely between participants - from a couple of weeks to many months - so the findings do not give us any clarity on how length of participation correlates with amount of benefit.

Nonetheless, given the challenges of gathering this type of data in Actif Woods Wales it is still impressive and gratifying that informed scientific analysis does show positive change in participants' health measures when our expectation might have been that this impact would be too small, diffuse or varied to register when analysed statistically. It is particularly

pleasing that this impact relates to two of the validated health measures we adopted and thus gives the project a basis for comparison with other interventions. It is also - perhaps even more - valuable to have identified that Actif Woods' impacts are progressive, as this makes the beginnings of a case for arguing that woodland activities are important to everyone's health and wellbeing and to addressing health inequalities at a population level, rather than just being useful as a therapeutic tool for specific types of health condition.

iv. Independent study of Actif Woods impacts by Cardiff Met In 2014, following earlier contact with researchers at Cardiff Metropolitan University, the project was approached to be a case study for a Masters research project carried out by Stephen Rees and supervised by Dr Debbie Clayton and Dr Jemma Hawkins. The study aimed to measure the benefits of being active outdoors by comparing an Actif Woods Woodland Gym session with the same session delivered in an indoors environment, paying particular attention to comparing physical activity intensity, perceived stress levels, perceived exertion and physical activity enjoyment. The study was carried out in Treherbert where, conveniently, Actif Woods' activity leader was both a professional gym instructor leading our Woodland Gym sessions and running an indoor gym adjacent to the woodland. It was a very small scale study involving 16 participants who were able to attend two special sessions specifically for the research. The clearest results were obtained around physical intensity, which was measured using research-grade accelerometers: this showed that the woodland gym session was as intensive as the indoor gym session and, as it lasted a little longer due to the time taken to walk up and down to the starting point, resulted in more calories burned than the indoor session. Participants were more likely to be 'vigorous' or 'extremely vigorous' indoors, but spent more time in the 'moderate' zone of exercise outdoors. Results around perceived exertion and stress were not statistically significant, although in both cases appeared slightly lower outdoors. On balance the results were less strong than had been expected: in the literature it is shown that outdoor exercise is more likely to be enjoyable, to be perceived as less effortful and to produce a greater reduction in stress. It is also likely that, other things being equal, these factors and the terrain make it likely that people will exercise more intensively outdoors. The researchers felt that very hot weather during the period of the research had played a role in confounding the expected results, and a small sample size made it hard to find statistically meaningful relationships in some of the data. Nonetheless the study did establish that, at least, activities in the outdoors are favourably comparable with their indoor equivalents, that a woodland gym session saw people burn more calories than an indoor session, and exercise at a level that is equivalent to riding a bike for the full duration of the session (mean MET value of 4.44). The researchers also observed informally that they noticed a different quality and degree of interaction between participants in the two settings, with much more laughter and banter outdoors than in the gym. This is something that could form the basis of a future study.

From the project's point of view the value of this piece of research was two-fold: firstly to calibrate Actif Woods activities against other forms of exercise and start building a picture of how they compare so that likely health outcomes can be better predicted and claimed; secondly, to establish that it is both possible and a positive experience to host research projects within Actif Woods: participants are willing and able to be studied if this can be done in an appropriate and enjoyable way, and researchers are willing and able to engage with the project in a way that produces valuable data for them.

v. Health impact Assessment screening by WHIASU (Public Health Wales) The HIA screening by WHIASU was not designed or intended to be a 'proof of impact' exercise: rather, the starting point for health impact assessment is that interventions in the public domain have impacts on health, either directly or indirectly through affecting the social determinants of health, whether they mean to or not. The purpose of the exercise is to identify opportunities to maximise the positive and minimise the negative within this and what we experienced was the screening stage of the process which would, in a full HIA, just be a first step to guide a much more extensive and thorough process of research, reflection and redesign. It seems unlikely that a fixed-term small-scale intervention like Actif Woods would ever actually complete the full process but it could be used to inform development of follow on programmes. The process was very useful to the Actif Woods team in broadening our understanding of where and how we might be impacting on health beyond direct impacts on the individuals who attend our sessions, and how this could be built on in future. Positive impacts identified (as per WHIASU's write up which comes from across all 5 project areas - not equally applicable to every group in every area) included:

Lifestyle: increasing physical activity and diet;

Social and community influences: reducing social isolation, increasing social contact, positive feelings about the local area, intergenerational relationships;

Mental wellbeing: providing a sense of control regarding activities in woods, emotional resilience - major impact on social relationships, arts and crafts, learning opportunities, taking notice of nature and species, opportunities to participate in a range of shared activities and increased pride in the local area;

Living conditions: improvements made to local green spaces and increased access to green spaces;

Economic conditions: formal and informal learning; volunteering opportunities; increased confidence and social skills = return to part-time employment.

It was registered that these impacts relate closely to the 5 Ways to Wellbeing:

1. Give - volunteering, taking care of the woodland 2. Connect - building social relationships, meeting new people 3. Keep learning - informal and formal, learning about nature, learning new skills,

learning about your local area, arts and crafts 4. Be active - increases in physical activity 5. Take notice - being in the natural environment taking notice of nature, observing

seasons, species identification.

No specific negative impacts were noted, although the need to manage impacts on woodlands and to manage expectations where the project is not guaranteed to continue was noted. Some of the vulnerable groups the project already reaches are particularly important from a public health point of view because of the difficulty of reaching them through mainstream programmes - e.g. middle-aged men in relation to suicide prevention. We were also encouraged to think further about how the timing of sessions could be tweaked to become more accessible to other populations such as people in work. Whilst as a standalone exercise this might not constitute evidence of Actif Woods Wales' impact, as part of the whole it lends weight to the view that Actif Woods Wales has been going about its work in a way that is likely to increase health and wellbeing for those involved and that there are plausible links between the kind of impacts we have observed through all the types of data available and known, well-evidenced public health outcomes.

b. Building Capacities This outcome focuses on building the capacities of individuals and local organisations to deliver wellbeing activities in woodlands. Logically, it responds to the idea that one constraint on woodlands being used for wellbeing is that there are not enough people or organisations out there with the ability to combine a knowledge of how to promote health and wellbeing (for people with any and various health needs) and a knowledge of how to engage in woodlands in ways that are fun, safe, enjoyable, and positive for the woodland environment. Within Actif Woods the primary focus has been on building capacities of individual woodland activity leaders working for the project as freelancers or volunteers, and partner organisations through whom we have accessed particular clusters of participants, although some activities - particularly training - have reached out beyond those directly involved in Actif Woods. Targets in this area related to provision of training, including but not limited to an OCN in Social Forestry, which have been hugely exceeded, and development of joint funding bids with partner organisations which have been slightly exceeded.

i. Social Forestry OCN The Social Forestry OCN course was designed on the basis of an earlier curriculum developed and delivered by Small Woods in Ironbridge, but which the organisation found unsatisfactory in a number of regards. Working in collaboration with Small Woods and with a range of Wales-wide stakeholders with an interest in this field, a revised 'Introduction to Social Forestry' course was put together through 2014, accredited by OCN West Midlands. It is designed as a 4-day course, for which students can obtain 3 credits at level 3 in the OCN system through submission of a post-course portfolio. The course was delivered three times during this phase of Actif Woods: as a 4 day intensive in September 2014 at the Centre for Alternative Technology and in June 2015 at the Woodland Skills Centre in Bodfari, and again at the Woodland Skills Centre in September 2015 as two separate weekends two weeks apart. Julia Walling has been lead tutor for all of

these courses, with Bob Shaw co-teaching at CAT and Rod Waterfield co-teaching and hosting the courses at WSC. By the end of the year some 31 people had attended the course, of whom at least 24 went forward to attain the OCN credits. About half of the participants were people directly involved in Actif Woods as staff, woodland leaders or partners, or in discussion with Coed Lleol about becoming involved in the next stage of the project. The remainder came through wider contacts and open advertising, demonstrating that there is active appetite for training in this field and some willingness to pay for it (although ability to pay is generally a challenge, particularly for small voluntary sector organisations and sole-trading individuals). In practice Actif Woods subsidised these three deliveries of the course by committing budget to pay for Actif Woods-related participants to attend: this ended up costing the same or less as it would have cost to send the same number of participants on the course at the advertised fee (£600) had someone else been providing it, and the course is now being offered by both Small Woods and Woodland Skills Centre on a self-funding basis. Long-term, then, Actif Woods' main additional investment was on staff time to convene the working group that redeveloped the course and to organise and administrate the courses - which involved diminishing levels of effort over time. In many ways, then, the Social Forestry OCN course has been a success beyond fulfilling the specific commitment to ensuring that ten people achieved this accredited learning: it has created a viable and effective training product which is now being rolled out in different venues and formats both in Wales and in England; through this it is building capacities for social forestry well beyond the Actif Woods project; and this initiative has been one area where Actif Woods has benefitted directly from being able to draw on the institutional bond between Coed Lleol and Small Woods - both in terms of being able to build on Small Woods' earlier version of the course and drawing down considerable expertise and time commitment from Richard Thomason, Small Woods' lead person on training. Another outcome of the Social Forestry course, and the whole process of putting it together, is that it has fostered an active demand for both further courses in Social Forestry - even a complete training pathway from basic interest to professional/practitioner status - and for other ways of supporting would-be Social Foresters' professional development. The latter has given rise to ideas around creating a Social Forestry Learning Community - a virtual forum and hub through which interested people can find out about social forestry, connect with others, access knowledge resources and information about training, and support each other through sharing and discussion. These ambitions are now being pursued through both follow on Actif Woods initiatives and related developments in Small Woods and represent an unexpected but exciting outcome of Actif Woods as a project.

ii. Skillshare and other skills training Other learning opportunities have been offered through:

Supporting leaders to go on relevant courses offered by other providers;

Providing specific woodland skills modules through an agreement with Dyfi Woodlands;

Skillshare events for peer-to-peer learning within the Actif Woods community.

Mid-way through this phase of Actif Woods a guidance note was drawn up to help the project team make consistent and strategically purposeful choices about which types of training to spend the various training budgets on, to ensure that all leaders met a common basic standard of training and were treated fairly with regards to their professional development under Actif Woods. This has resulted in more clarity about what is expected of leaders, and in practice the team has focused on making best use of free or already subsidised opportunities to foster skills development within budgetary limits. External courses have been particularly important for ensuring that all leaders gain essential skills such as appropriate First Aid training (First Aid in the Outdoors), Walk Leader Training or Mental Health First Aid, where certificated and respected courses are provided by more specialist providers. Some of these have been accessed for free. The woodland skills modules developed by Dyfi Woodlands were designed to meet a specific need, voiced particularly by relatively less experienced activity leaders who wanted to learn practical woodland skills that they could introduce to their groups, rather than or in addition to the full Social Forestry course. Modules offered covered: using a kelly kettle; campfire cooking and foraging; safe tool use; conservation activities to include on woodland walks, and tree and plant i.d. to include on woodland walks. These were offered at no cost to Actif Woods leaders and low cost to any other interested organisations on a cost-recovery basis, and over the course of three years have contributed about 70 training days to the project total. Skillshares have also been an important part of the overall strategy for developing leaders' skills, often taking place alongside other regional project activities such as seminars or stakeholder events. In the final year of the project the team felt that this approach had reached a bit of a limit - in that leaders within each area had by then had several opportunities to learn from each other and perhaps did not find much value in repeating very similar things, and for self-employed leaders it was difficult to make it worth their while attending such sessions. Instead it was decided to pool the regional and central budgets set aside for skillshare and have one nation-wide skillshare event, which leaders would be paid to attend, including an overnight stay to accommodate people's long journeys and to encourage cross-project networking. This event took place at Plas Tan y Bwlch, the Snowdonia National Park education centre, in November 2015. 27 staff, activity leaders and volunteers from across Actif Woods took part in approximately 18 hour-long skillshare sessions (running in parallel) plus several hours of all-group sessions for mutual introductions, review of the project and future scenario-planning. It was a considerable investment for the project but generated a lot of positive feedback (see below), not only about the skills and different approaches to activities that had been learned, but also about the benefits of connecting with peers from different parts of the project and understanding the value of each others' work in this light.

'It's been really interesting to share knowledge and skills in a relaxed atmosphere, I'll take away lots of new ideas to try with groups'

'I've enjoyed meeting all the other leaders - sharing ideas and specialisms. Specifically I will take away techniques for safe tool use and simple poetry writing'

'I enjoyed networking and meeting people, talking about tools, finding out what people do in their sessions, what motivates them, how they tick. Large 'library' of expertise!'

'Valued the 'little things gleaned' to slot into sessions, and the idea of exploring learning-together activities (rather than being the expert)'

'Feeling part of a big picture, understanding how AWW works and the future; Lots of ideas for activities to run, General energy and inspiration for doing more of this work.'

'Enjoyed networking, learning new techniques for whittling, refreshing my skills in tree ID. Inspired to learn more about conservation, learning about the overall picture on policy level and funding. I'm taking away new skills, plan to learn more about woodland management, ideas of how I can support training, considering how to take this forward independently'.

It also generated some appetite for sharing more about things that do not always feature in routine skill share events, such as how to do partnership working with woodland managers and site owners; how to plan activity programmes; policy and other external developments; and updates on how everyone and the project is progressing. On reflection this was a very valuable experience and having more whole-project get-togethers like this might be a really useful way of building coherence, shared understanding and team spirit in future projects.

iii. Partnership development Partnerships have been established across the project on many different bases, including funding, hosting AWW area staff, research and partnering in delivery of woodland activities to particular client groups in each area. Project Officers have been successful in building relationships with key organisations in their localities, resulting in delivery of dedicated activity programmes and/or inclusion of those organisations' clients in open-access AWW groups with all the benefits noted under outcome 1. The vision of the project was that building such partnerships would contribute towards building long-term and mainstream capacity for woodland activities for wellbeing, through a gradual transfer of skills and responsibilities from the AWW leader to the partner organisation. It has been challenging to achieve this during the lifetime of this project phase. In a context of budget cuts and widespread uncertainty many partner organisations have lacked the staff capacity to commit anyone's time to taking on co-delivery of woodland activities and as uncertainty leads to high staff turnover it has also been difficult for relevant organisations to accumulate the appropriate skills. Whilst Actif Woods funding meant the activities were delivered anyway partners have not necessarily all recognised or pursued the expectation that they were working towards becoming ready to deliver the equivalent themselves. Nonetheless, all partners have valued having Coed Lleol provide these activities and now that the project's own funding situation has changed many are now taking more active steps towards this goal. At the same time, many of them are seeking opportunities to get additional funding to co-fund ongoing Actif Woods delivery by Coed Lleol.

Whilst expectations about handing over to partners are still a work in progress it is already clear that the experience of Actif Woods has been an important opportunity for partners to learn and to challenge their own thinking about their service. This is illustrated for instance by the following feedback from partners in Anglesey, gathered for the final celebration events in March 2016:

'I have noticed that our clients have gained in confidence whilst in the woods, and they have become noticeably more confident as a result. We have all gained valuable lessons about our surroundings and have set up our own 'mini actif woods' in Llangoed, Anglesey' (social services)

'Clients express their love of both the woodland environment and the activities. They are therefore more responsive and happy. We've learned it's highly beneficial to vary clients' routine, especially in an outdoor environment' (Gerddi Haulfre)

'What I see is more interaction between people, better at working together, getting more engaged in tasks and keen to keep on coming to sessions. I've learned [that] getting people involved and participating in woodland management brings people out of themselves and healps them get on better with each other' (Coed Cymru)

In the Treherbert project area partners have included the local health board: see boxed text below for an account of this.

Emma Westall is Senior Occupational Therapist in Adult Mental health Rehabilitation and Recovery Inpatient Services and has been overseeing clients' engagement in Actif Woods. 'I am service lead for ecotherapy rocused projects on behalf of the Health Board [and] have a strong role in evaluating the impact of ecotherapy focused interventions on recovery, which is currently measured in terms of engagement and wellbeing. ... Patients from across both our inpatient units... currently access the Actif Woods project in Treherbert. The project has encouraged patients to explore and reconnect with the natural environment through a fortnightly woodland activity project that incorporates Nordic walking, green gym activities, bush craft and making a hot beverage over an open fire. Patients are enabled to increase activity levels at their own pace in a supported and inclusive environment. Feedback from patients has been extremely encouraging: to date the Actif Woods project has had broad appeal, succesfully engaging a large proportion of our patient community. ... I feel the holistic approach to treating illness based on the natural environment's ability to improve health and wellbeing can play a significant role in reducing stress, whilst providing patients with opportunities for physical exercise and social interaction. Patient engagement in the project is an excellent way for [them] to learn new skills whilst enjoying the support of their peers. From a professional perspective I have observed significant benefits to patients and staff alike by utilising natural outdoor space as a therapeutic environment, consequently challenging how 'therapy' is traditionally

delivered and conducted. Engagement in Actif Woods has [built] therapeutic rapport and relationships by allowing both patients and staff to explore different ways of relating to each other, freeing up ways to think about their issues and difficulties. Moving outside of the hospital/ward environment encourages and allows patients to distance themselves from their current situation and clinical diagnosis. Providing a relaxed and safe natural environment to facilitate this allows patients a greater sense of individuality to move beyond their mental illness and feel empowered.'

iv. Volunteers Although the outcome framework does not set any specific targets around volunteers, incorporating volunteers into the project and building their capacities to deliver woodland activities has been an increasingly important part of how the project works in practice. To date 28 volunteers have been involved in co-delivering Actif Woods Wales sessions, giving 631 hours to the project. This represents a meaningful contribution to the project and is obviously relevant to the broader agenda of building capacities for this kind of work. It is likely to be a stronger focus in the future, not least because the ups and downs of grant funding make relying exclusively on paid activity leaders an approach that is difficult to sustain in the long term.

c. Raising awareness of the benefits of woodlands for wellbeing This outcome relates to 'making the case' for woodlands as an environment that is valuable in terms of health and wellbeing, both in itself and as a site for organised activites. The premise of the outcome is that this is proven and therefore the role of the project is to raise awareness of it. Hence the targets relate simply to the number of interactions between the project and external stakeholders rather than to generating or deepening analysis about the extent to which this is the case. This is defensible, in that the research literature does suggest that woodlands are good for wellbeing, at least to a level sufficient for a project of this scale and type - but this framing of the outcome is slightly at odds with the logic of outcome 1 and ambitions elsewhere in the project proposal which imply a commitment to rigorous enquiry and 'action research' into this relationship. Rigorous enquiry requires an unbiased starting point and a process of evidence-gathering that seeks to test the hypothesis, not just support it, and action research is simply a practice-based approach to doing this. But outcome 3 implies we have already made up our minds that the hypothesis is true. This perhaps seems like conceptual nit-picking but it has proven to have quite challenging implications in practice, most particularly in trying to monitor and report on the project meaningfully and consistently. The targets - which relate to attendances at project events, press releases and case studies produced, and website hits - have all been achieved rather comfortably. However, the real impact of this area of work in terms of significantly raising awareness has less to do with having achieved those numerical targets and more to do with who has been engaged, in what kind of exchange, and in which forums. This section therefore focuses on activities which fall outside the formal indicators framework.

i. External events The most recent report to NRW lists 59 external events which project staff have attended as representatives of Actif Woods (please see Annex 2 for details), in many cases having opportunities to actively share information about the project through presentations, workshops, displays and/or circulation of related materials. These span a wide range of audiences from across health, social care, woodland and broader natural resource issues, and take in public, voluntary, private and research sector audiences, most often mixed together. The mid-term evaluation, and associated mid-project stakeholder events, verified that the project had value, and that it was seen as successful, important and potentially catalytic but suggested its tendency to focus on trying to 'prove our worth' in a rather 'us' and 'them' framing of the core challenge was absorbing too much time and attention on looking inwards. Instead the project was encouraged to connect upwards and outwards more boldlyand sharing our experience more widely. Rather than waiting until we had all the answers so we could 'convince the health people' the recommendation was that we might have more leverage by being more willing to share the questions and the quest, finding powerful allies and engaging in a process of 'collaborative co-enquiry' about what works, why and how. This push explains why across the second half of the project we have collectively attended so many more and diverse external events. In sharing Actif Woods with wider audiences it is apparent that the general claims for green care, eco-therapy, getting healthy outdoors etc are widely recognised and that we are in the midst of a wave of enthusiasm, interest and energy for this whole field. This is undoubtedly catalysed somewhat by the financial climate in which 'doing more with less' is everyone's predicament and low-cost interventions which make better use of existing resources (including the environment) are inherently attractive. But this is not the whole story and there are also deeper motivations around health equality, valuing the environment, improving public services and pursuing social wellbeing. In this context, sharing what Actif Woods does is rarely completely out of the ordinary. Speaking from my own experience, where Actif Woods' contribution is unique and particularly valued is around its focus on woodland environments in particular (unique in the Welsh context); working with people with any and all health concerns rather than a specific diagnosis (unusual if not unique in the UK, at least); its efforts to measure and evaluate its impacts in a more rigorous way than is usual for similar scale voluntary sector projects; and its readiness to share the realities and the challenges of what we have experienced rather than simply thin success stories. This has made the project seem more credible and more interesting to a wider array of external parties, and led to us being invited to contribute to discussions that go well beyond our own core remit but which link what Actif Woods Wales is doing to much wider agendas: for instance,

the invitation from Wales Audit Office's Good Practice Exchange to contribute to public sector seminars on protecting green space in a context of cuts;

being invited to host workshops on behaviour change in the health and social care sectors for Working With Not To (an influential co-production project with links in to the NHS and Welsh Government) and at the recent Bangor Behaviour Change Festival;

and speaking to commercial outdoor adventure providers about the health benefits of outdoor activity and how they could meet public health needs.

Actif Woods is now being cited by the new Future Generations Commissioner as a good example of partnership working of the kind that the new Wellbeing of Future Generations Act will require of all public bodies in Wales, which indicates the impressive level of visibility and credibility it has achieved.

ii. Research Collaborations As discussed above, Actif Woods has developed links with researchers in various fields, particularly on the back of the efforts to demonstrate impact on health. The specific studies by Cardiff Met and Bangor students mentioned above are part of more ongoing relationships with both institutions, and the project has also made substantive links with Exercise Science researchers at Aberystwyth University and with an array of researchers at Birmingham University associated with the new Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFOR). There are definitely challenges to engaging with the research community: for instance long lead-in times for research projects to get designed and funded make it hard to design research that can be carried out within the delivery timetable of Actif Woods. Also in some disciplines the preference for working with research subjects who have not yet experienced an intervention has made it difficult to bolt research on to Actif Woods Wales as an already up and running project. Nonetheless the relationships have been interesting and fruitful, and have in turn created further opportunities. For instance at Bangor a new PhD proposal has been put together around Actif Woods, bringing researchers in the Schools of Geography and Psychology together for the first time and with industry sponsorship from the Woodland Trust. If the funding is awarded this will create very substantial potential to design research into and around the next phases of Actif Woods Wales and significantly deepen the quality of the evidence generated through it. This positions the project to go even further in influencing the relevant debates rather than simply sharing success stories.

iii. Outreach to Health and Social Care Providers Throughout the project efforts have been made to reach out to health professionals in various ways. This has included both inviting relevant professionals to Actif Woods event and other approaches such as directly contacting local GP practices in the project areas inviting them to find out about Actif Woods and even signpost relevant patients to the project if possible. This has sometimes spontaneously or opportunistically and, at one or two moments, more systematically across all areas. Routine commentary by team members suggests that the experience has been patchy: some individual GPs have become enthused and been willing to tell patients about Actif Woods, whilst others have been less amenable or just difficult to reach. This is not an area of work that has been systematically monitored so it is difficult to be more specific about the scale and pattern of this, but it is undoubtedly an area of Actif Woods' experience it would be worth reviewing in more detail. Both our understanding of how GP (and other) referrals work and the context in which health professionals currently operate have evolved over the project period so taking stock now would seem worthwhile in order to develop a more strategic approach in future.

This might in turn contribute to a broader learning initiative which has emerged partially out of Actif Woods, being developed collaboratively with Working With Not To, looking to explore the barriers and enablers to bringing nature and the environment into health and social care.

d. Improving Woodlands for the Benefit of Local Communities This outcome captures the intention for the project to have a positive impact on the woodlands visited through Actif Woods, with particular interest in improvements that benefit local communities. This reflects Coed Lleol's broader remit to 'reconnect people and woodlands in Wales' as well as a specific desire to demonstrate and ensure that people using woodlands for their own wellbeing should be mutually beneficial with the woodland's own wellbeing. The targets for this area of work related to number of woodland improvements made, and number of woodland agreements in place. Both have been substantially exceeded but, in retrospect, this is partly because they were set at exceptionally unambitious levels given the way the project was intended to roll out. Twelve formal woodland agreements have been developed over the course of the project. The intention is that these agreements secure not just permission and access for the various activities but also provide a vehicle for linking what Actif Woods groups do to the management plan for that woodland - i.e. outlining appropriate and desired woodland improvement tasks to be completed. Ideally this would reflect some specific ideas about what the local community benefit from that woodland could or should be, preferably arrived at through dialogue with that community, and how the improvements undertaken will build up to achieve that benefit. To my knowledge, though, there is no clear definition of what the 'benefit of local communities' means or how it would be ascertained so in practice the project's approach to woodland improvement has been to assume that any woodland improvement benefits whatever community accesses it; and that specific interventions which improve access, interpretation or ecological quality will at least make visiting the woodland easier and more enjoyable, if not attracting in members of the local community. This phase of the project has not specifically measured how many people visit woodlands, or how participation in the project changes participants' behaviour around visiting woodlands, as none of the indicators related to this. With hindsight this was a pity given Coed Lleol's primary identity as part of a woodland organisation. However, evidence from the qualitative data does suggest that a significant number of participants either would not or could not have visited woodlands without coming as part of Actif Woods Wales - because it's an unfamiliar environment, people aren't sure of their right to be there, or because of lack of confidence or physical strength to visit without support - and therefore the project is bringing more people into local woodlands, or to woodlands they would not otherwise have accessed. It also suggests that, of those who are physically able to access them outside of the project, some participants do then become more likely to visit woodlands specifically or go out into natural environments either alone or with friends and family in their own time.

Woodland improvements made are quite varied (see Annex 2) and include conservation, woodland management and access issues. There is, though, no definition of what 'an improvement' constitutes so it is not clear how these compare with each other or what they add up to. In terms of level of effort some 967 person hours of participant time have been logged as woodland improvement contribution - which looks like a large number but equates to less than an hour per person, and considerably less than one person-hour per session.

3. Discussion In this section I expand on a number of points which, from an evaluative perspective, emerge from the experiences discussed above but cross-cut the outcome-by-outcome analysis of the project. They are offered as areas for further reflection and deliberation, before moving on to specific recommendations in section 4.

a. Learn the lessons Most fundamentally, Actif Woods Wales has been a rich and multi-layered experience from which there are many interesting and valuable lessons to be learned. An evaluation can go so far in pulling together what has been achieved and what that means for future project, but it can never be completely comprehensive and anyway cannot substitute for those directly involved - particularly the delivery team and steering group - doing their own thinking about the experience. It seems particularly important to mention this because, as an essentially successful project, Actif Woods is already rolling out and moving forward so it would be very easy to miss this opportunity to make sense of what has happened. Specifically, questions which occur to me relate to the fundamentals of the project design, the implicit underlying theory of change, and what might need resolving or clarifying before moving ahead with further projects:

With hindsight, was our primary purpose to demonstrate an approach, promote it or research it? And, given what we have experienced, which of those purposes do we now think is a) strategically most important bearing in mind how the context has moved on and b) most achievable and appropriate given our likely resources?

What sense do we now make of the tensions we experienced e.g. around reaching higher numbers of people vs. engaging fewer people for longer? And depending on our future purpose (see above) which approach now seems most relevant?

What sense do we make of the areas where we hugely exceeded our targets? e.g. doing nearly 10 x more training than anticipated, or 4 x more woodland improvements. Was this about underestimating need? or underestimating opportunities? or finding that these strategies were much more impactful and valuable than we'd realised? or just doing what was easy, to compensate for not being able to deliver on other things? etc. In which case, should these become more or less important aspects of our strategy going forward?

Other questions will, undoubtedly, arise from the following sections and in the minds of stakeholders reading this evaluation. As many as possible of these should be shared and considered. The key discussion point here is that just because the project has been broadly successful does not mean there is no need to reflect on it further: quite the contrary, and

taking the time to do this now might make the difference between subsequent projects being just more of the same or making a breakthrough difference.

b. Targetting and outreach Initially the project aimed to involve 'people with chronic health conditions', a focus which it was hoped would help target populations with specific and above-average need for improved health and wellbeing. Although this reflected common sense about wanting to focus efforts where they are most needed in practice it proved conceptually slippery trying to identify what 'chronic health conditions' actually meant, and practically counterproductive to try and filter who participated in the project on this basis. There is no universal accepted definition of what counts as a chronic health condition, and the idea of turning away participants who did not seem to have what the leader recognised as a chronic health condition felt very uncomfortable indeed. Because of this over time we have moved away from this language more recently phrased along the lines of 'people who have or who are at risk of health problems' - which actually means 'anyone' when you analyse it but still implicitly focuses on a sense of targetting around need. Similarly, although the theory underpinning the choice of project locations draws partly on evidence of need in terms of health inequalities and health deprivation, in practice we have not sought - and could not reasonably seek - to filter who participates on the grounds that they personally fit the relevant categories. At the same time our own evidence on health impacts shows that many people participate without having any specific health concerns as such; that benefits are felt by all types of participants, whether or not they have a health condition; and that the specific benefits people gain appear to be progressive - that is, people who need the most improvement gain the most (or at least they gain the most in relation to the specific measures used). In this sense it is a naturally levelling process. If this is so, it could be argued that there is little value to Actif Woods trying or claiming to target at a whole project level: rather, the team should make a virtue out of necessity by removing this upfront pretence and instead encouraging a wide diversity of participants engaging in a wide diversity of activities, wherever the other supporting conditions (primarily willing partners and accessible woodlands) are in place. The diversity of participants is one of Actif Woods' unique characteristics in the field of green care and ecotherapy, which is in itself a useful USP. A diverse population within the project creates scope to ask a wider range of research questions and make different types of comparison through appropriately designed studies, whilst creating potential to reach many more participants in total. Further, this would open up scope to actively experiment with suggestions arising from the Health Impact Assessment such as drawing in particular new user groups like working people and/or to put more focus on specific user groups who are of particular interest to public health authorities, such as middle-aged men - without having to reconcile this with vague and un-meetable criteria about health conditions and/or levels of deprivation. At a population level the health gains should, logically, be comparable or better as a result of opening up the intervention to any and all potential participants. Meanwhile it may reduce

some of the burden of complexity from Coed Lleol, freeing it up to work in more places with more different partners on the basis of their interest, capacity and opportunity. Broadening the reach of the project in this way should also broaden the associated benefits of raising awareness, knowledge and relevant skills for woodland activities, which, if our ultimate goal is to become part of mainstream health and social care across Wales, would also be a positive step. As mentioned in an earlier section, it would also be worth reviewing another aspect of Actif Woods' targetting, i.e. that around outreach to professionals in health and social care which, as discussed, has been a mixed experience. Whilst the external context for this continues to evolve rapidly (e.g. with the development of DEWIS, single point of access schemes, and new professional practices approaches embedded in delivering the Social Services and Wellbeing Act) it is still important to understand what we've tried, where, and how, and which aspects of it have worked to what extent, so that Actif Woods is best placed to take up whatever opportunities these new realities present. Further, this should include reviewing whether, in fact, health and social care practitioners such as GPs are the right entry point for taking Actif Woods to scale - or whether, given what we have learned about the cross-population benefits of what we do - it would be more appropriate to focus on other broader opportunities, beyond health and social care per se.

c. Measuring health and wellbeing Measuring health and wellbeing was a priority focus during this phase of Actif Woods Wales and has seen the project attempting to use methods that are not typical of a project of this scale and type but are used within health practice and research. Whilst this has been a worthwhile experiment and a valuable learning experience in many ways, we have ultimately demonstrated that it is unrealistic to combine using these kind of methods with being a real-world project that is actually measured on its impact in society, not its research value. At least, it is unrealistic to do this and expect both the research results and the real-world impact to be of good quality. The protocols required to make scientific enquiry effective and robust are incompatible with the approaches required to deliver a successful and impactful social change project. The specifics of these incompatibilities and their difficult implications for the project have been written about extensively throughout the three-years and do not need re-iteration here. Anyway, Actif Woods is already moving forward with a new approach to monitoring and evaluation which moves away from using medically accepted tools and measuring impact on individuals but invites engagement by researchers who are properly equipped to do these things in smaller focused studies. There are just three further reflections I would add to strengthen and qualify this approach. Firstly, the policy context in Wales is pushing practitioners further and further away from addressing people's health and wellbeing through the lens of needs and standardised responses to specific diagnoses - and towards a focus on what matters to that individual in a whole-person, socially situated and subjective way. The Social Services and Wellbeing Act in particular is very explicit in this regard, but other pieces of legislation and the growing movement towards co-productive approaches to public services in general make it a broader

phenomenon. It will be to Actif Woods' advantage, then, to be able to swim with this tide by building a participant-led, whole-person approach to understanding impact - rather than swimming against it by continuing to push for 'scientific proof' type evidence that is, by its very nature, de-personalised. Secondly, a key feature of the experience of Actif Woods Wales, according to participants' narrative data and day-to-day feedback, is the integrative nature of the experience (i.e. combining being outdoors in nature, being active, being with other people, doing meaningful activities, learning new things etc). Whilst there are many benefits to inviting external researchers in to look at Actif Woods it is very likely that their interest will hone in on narrow pieces of the overall experience rather than the totality of it. I would suggest this makes it a priority that the project's own self-reflection, monitoring and evaluation in the next few years explicitly prioritises taking a holistic, whole-person, integrated view of impact - trying to establish whether and how the experience may in fact be more than the sum of its parts - and the team should celebrate the fact that this invites adoption of some really creative, enjoyable, people-centred methods. Thirdly, following on from this, a key lesson from the previous phase has been that monitoring and measurement methods that participants and/or activity leaders and/or staff do not feel comfortable using, or find it inconvenient to use in the normal course of activities, end up being resisted and avoided. Sometimes this is deliberate and conscious, often it is not. What matters is that either way it is self-defeating and an inefficient use of resources: monitoring will never be as thorough or as useful as it should be. Therefore I would strongly encourage the team to develop any new methods starting from what is interesting and useful to people on the 'frontline' of the project - ideally in many different ways, not just as 'data' - and build the monitoring system on that foundation. Hopefully the new system already being implemented has some of those qualities, but there is undoubtedly further to go with this approach and the team is encouraged to keep exploring this scope rather than reverting to what is conventional just because it's conventional.

d. Partnership and relationship building realities Like many similar projects Actif Woods has been built through partnership working on many levels, most particularly partnerships with relevant agencies in health, social care, and management of woodlands in the project localities. As already acknowledged in the mid-term evaluation, successful partnership-building has been a real strength of the project and is a credit to the Project Officers in each area who have been the primary people responsible for seeking out and nurturing relevant relationships. One key reflection on partnership building is that it is very time-consuming and can be rather unpredictable. In Actif Woods' case this has been demonstrated in many instances, particularly in accounting for the relative speed at which the project has taken shape in different areas - in some places slow to start but then gaining momentum, and in others starting off with a flurry but proving hard to sustain. Factors that have played into this include changes in partners' own financial situation; staff turnover meaning that relationships have to be re-built; and sometimes a mismatch between the enthusiasms of key workers and their clients with regards to woodland activities - i.e. sometimes workers feeling sure this will benefit their clients but clients not taking it up with much vigour, and

sometimes clients being enthusiastic but workers taking some convincing that this is something they can safely integrate into their work. This is a far from original observation - every partnership-based project ends up highlighting how time-consuming and unpredictable these relationships can be - but it still needs making because partnership projects are still too often designed and monitored with insufficient regard to these realities. Mostly this takes the form of pressure on front-line staff to start delivering project activities and results to a pre-set timetable, which may make a nod to the start-up time required (with lower targets in year 1, for instance) but is still linear, creating no room for dealing with emergent realities. This creates perverse pressures about who to work with which have little to do with strategic priorities and maximising ultimate impact. On the whole Actif Woods has navigated these pressures successfully, but it remains pertinent to consider what else might have been achieved had these been handled differently. Which partnerships might have been established, and which participant groups might have been reached, if Actif Woods' very part-time Project Officers had been working towards strategic relationship-building goals rather than numerical delivery targets in the first year or so? How much capacity might have been unleashed by now if they had not needed to take on direct delivery of activities themselves? These are hypothetical questions, not criticisms, but my suggestion is that there is something to be learned here for future phases of Actif Woods (and other partnership projects). Certainly, having now gone way beyond the 'proof of concept' stage of this work, there is room to re-consider what kinds of targets are really helpful at the delivery end given what we know about how partnership working works out in practice, and what the best use of precious and skilled staff time is given the big picture aims rather than the little picture pressures. A second key reflection about partnership working, which emerged particularly strongly from the team evaluation workshop with Steve Evison, is that if partnerships are meant to be developmental - i.e. to support the partner in moving from where they are now to a different situation, with new capacities and strands of work - this needs to be built in from the very start of the relationship with them. In particular, if the intention is that by the end of the project period they will be independently delivering woodland activities to their own clients, fitting in with their own strategic priorities, it is extremely important to be mindful of creating the right expectations and setting the right benchmarks throughout the relationship. Again, on a practical level this comes back to partner selection and uncertainty - developmental partnerships can only happen if the partner needs and wants to gain that capacity for itself, and sometimes this will not be known until they have had a chance to experience Actif Woods for themselves, get their own sense of how their clients respond to it and see how it might fit into their ways of working. Not every partner is going to be willing and able to take this on - and if in the meantime Actif Woods provides activities itself it is all too easy to slip into a relationship where the partnership is not developmental at all but is just about Actif Woods becoming a parallel service that partners can signpost clients towards. And the more this gets a life of its own the less likely it is to feel like something the partner can ultimately bring 'in-house', even assuming they have the space and ability to do so. So if partnerships are to be truly developmental this requires a very careful and circumspect approach from the start, with a lot of flexibility and willingness to adapt along

the way, whilst remaining open to finding that only a handful of partners actually can and will follow through in the long term. Approaches to and measures of partnership working need to start from these expectations to be realistic and effective.

e. Social forestry learning As noted above, the development of a core social forestry training course has been a positive and significant achievement within Actif Woods Wales. However, a couple of points arise from this experience which bear some reflection with regards to future implications. Firstly, through this project we have evolved an entrenched but slightly confused distinction between 'social forestry' and 'what Actif Woods is all about'. The entrenched bit is that we use the term 'social forestry' to relate to the specific training module and the envisaged future curriculum for a profession or set of practitioners, i.e. 'social foresters', but not very widely elsewhere in the Actif Woods project (except occasionally to call it a 'flagship social forestry project' in public-facing materials - without explaining what that is). In theory this makes sense because Social Forestry, as we understand it, is a much broader field than just 'wellbeing in woodlands' which is what Actif Woods focuses on. The confusion comes, though, in that actually what is presented and discussed in the training is quite heavily focused on equipping people to engage with wellbeing, health and social care rather than the full range of things which the Social Forestry label can apply to. Likewise, when we have discussed the broader learning pathway and associated learning community, there is a bias towards certain types of activity or client group or skills or implied contexts rather than others. Without getting lost in the background to this, or the various semantic arguments that could be had, the point is that on a practical level it is important to keep in mind how our habitual framing of 'social forestry' may pan out in the future - particularly where it will situate Actif Woods, Coed Lleol and (by extension) Small Woods in relation to other organisations and bodies of work which may be strategically important beyond Actif Woods itself. Much as it's currently easy to live with a 'wellbeing' focused framing of social forestry it will ultimately become limiting and can also cause unnecessary tensions with peer organisations who see it differently (e.g. a bit of friction with Llais y Goedwig in the past around development of the course). Therefore in ongoing work around this learning agenda it would seem wise to hold open space for engaging with other types of social forestry work and actively consider what other skill sets or areas of interest might be relevant to social foresters beyond what is currently taught - for instance, community engagement, participation and inclusion, heritage and local culture, resilience and self-help, community woodland management, education and so on.. This does not imply Coed Lleol, let alone Actif Woods, needs to become involved in all of these topics itself - rather that the whole field should be pursued in an inclusive way drawing on many organisations, projects and people with their varied experiences. It also does not imply Actif Woods cannot be called a social forestry project - it can and it is, it's just one type of social forestry and this could perhaps be communicated more vociferously and consistently, to the benefit of both the project and the wider agenda of building social forestry as a practice.

4. Recommendations These flow directly from the above discussions. Firstly, the broad suggestions emerging from the Discussion section (section 3):

1. Take time to reflect on the lessons from Actif Woods, even while moving ahead with the next iteration of the project;

2. Reconsider how and what level it is useful to target the project, and whether 'needs' based targetting of participants should be replaced with more purposeful and inclusive outreach;

3. Carry out a focused review of strategies for targetting and outreach to health and social care professionals, in order to prepare for future (changing) opportunities;

4. Embrace approaches to measuring impact which focus on what matters to people and their lived experience - both participants and staff - and which fit emerging trends in the policy environment;

5. Develop more nuanced and future-oriented approaches to partnership-building which also respect the time investment and unpredictabilities involved;

6. Clarify and then better communicate what social forestry means, how Actif Woods and related approaches fit within it, and what else it entails - building relationships accordingly.

Specific recommendations emerging from the review of impacts and achievements:

1. Adopt new methods for measuring health and wellbeing which are more enjoyable and informative for both participants and activity leaders;

2. Select indicators and set targets to create purposeful, appropriate and consistent incentives across the project;

3. Continue to invite external researchers and professional bodies to carry out studies on, with and around Actif Woods;

4. Adopt a more purposeful and strategic but inclusive approach to recruiting participants into the project;

5. Continue to catalyse development of learning pathways and a learning community around Social Forestry in Wales and, with Small Woods input, across the UK;

6. Create more opportunities for all-project get-togethers e.g. on an annual basis, to promote more extensive and rewarding skill-sharing and to link this to building shared understanding, awareness and motivation for delivering the project;

7. Make better use of skills within the network by promoting more peer-to-peer training, including dedicated training events and e.g. mentoring and experience-building exchanges;

8. Clarify appropriate expectations of partners and develop methods to incorporate these into new relationships from the outset;

9. Continue to develop volunteering within the project; 10. Focus awareness/influence-building activities on targets which reflect the quality and

significance of connections made and the level of exchange with them, rather than simply their number;

11. Develop a clear approach to and measures of 'community benefit', and put this into practice;

12. Develop a clear definition of woodland improvements and develop measures which relate to their impact rather than quantity;

13. Develop a meaningful measure of engagement with woodlands and start measuring this;

14. Raise targets around woodland improvement and engagement to better reflect the importance of this agenda to Coed Lleol.

5. Annexes

1. Recommendations from Team Evaluation Workshop This workshop was carried out in March 2016, with facilitation by Steve Evison of Resources 4 Change. The following is extracted from his write-up to Coed Lleol (which the team has reviewed and broadly endorsed). It is included here so that all recommendations emerging at this point in time are in one place although strictly speaking the wider questions about Coed Lleol and Small Woods are beyond the scope of the Actif Woods project evaluation:

Lessons to consider in developing Actif Woods across Small Woods Association The programme itself It is clear that the Actif Woods programme has steadily built up an approach to engage communities in woodlands for their own wellbeing. This has happened over a period prior to and including the Big Lottery funded intervention. Clear pathways are needed for:

- Individual participants from within recipient communities

- Leaders and deliverers of Actif Woods projects

- Communities in which Actif Woods intervenes

- Partner / delivery organisations

This should include clear indicators around participant wellbeing and woodland engagement. These pathways need to be clear to participants and potential participants from the beginning of their engagement and would benefit from being supported by clear handouts (and perhaps with leaders and partners clear agreements). Actif Woods Wales have contracts with all our leaders, as well as a woodland leader handbook and induction process. Actif Woods Wales develop ‘Partnership Agreements’ with all key partners that want to participate in the project, outlining what each partner will bring to the project and where the partnership is going. For some of these if they were linked to CPD or qualifications there would be an additional benefit (this relates to ‘roll out’ of the social forestry qualifications below). Training is a key element of the Partnership Agreement. The programme needs to be clear what is provided free and for how long. There needs to be consideration given to greater use of charging for some services. This would be linked the levels of development defined within the pathways. The programme pathways need to be clear when it provides direct support to individuals, leaders, groups, partners and when this ceases or moves to a different form.

Actif Woods needs to capture the essence of its product into a set of clear guidance around the use of woodland for health and wellbeing. As far as possible all the participant activities should be based around the woodland and woodland activities (rather than simply activities based in woods). This will aim to build wellbeing of both people and woodland) rather than simply using the woods as an outdoor space. Many Actif Woods groups do work within the woodland management plan, with guidance from the woodland ranger, to improve the site – they are focused on improvements such as; clearing pathways, installing steps, restoring an ancient arboretum, clearing invasive species, litter picks and so on and so forth. Woodland gym groups aim to use the natural materials of the woodland for their exercise, hence creating a stronger relationship between woodland and health. The green gym equipment that has been designed, whilst functional, does not have a clearly demonstrable link to woodland and woodland benefit. The programme should challenge themselves to ensure all product fits all criteria of the Actif Woods concept. This gym equipment could be placed anywhere and doesn’t link to the wood and its products. Perhaps having a set of guiding quick reference criteria would help here. For example:

- Does it benefit people’s wellbeing

- Does it fit the type of wood being used

- Does it derive from the woodland products and the benefit of positive woodland

management

- Does it use product gained through management which supports appropriate

management interventions for this type of woodland.

The social forestry programme should be rolled out across SWA and marketed and branded as a SWA product. It would be useful to draw together a summary of what has and what has not worked across the monitoring and evaluation methods used since it is likely they can provide useful insights into the future of this and other programmes. The R4C facilitator has already recommended to the organisers that Actif woods be invited to speak at the Snowdonia Active conference in April 2016. The use of the evaluation data derived from the Actif Woods programme fits well with increased interest in the use of the outdoor sector in delivering wellbeing, potentially giving Actif Woods greater profile (and therefore funding) in the delivery of this agenda. Internal The core staff workload is creating ongoing demands on the staff which are unsustainable. They could potentially lead to negative impacts on a number of fronts. Consideration needs to be given to setting realistic workloads and expectations on staff time. A decision is needed to ensure some level of basic core financial support to the core team for the Actif Woods programme. There needs to be a closer link between Coed Lleol and Small Woods nationally. This requires greater clarity of management and operation between core and developed roles and services, with appropriate central support from head office. Actif Woods should be

developed as a Small Woods product, not just focus on Wales. Greater use needs to be made of social media to raise the profile of the Actif woods work and gain further support. This could be linked with crowd funding and other fund raising and awareness projects. If the organisation goes down this route of individual donors there will be associated administration that will need investigating; some of which could be positive (e.g. gift aid). With extra time for setting up new projects like this a fundraising plan could be made investigating possibilities for high level donors, business support, trusts and foundation funding, charitable grants (as at present), individual donors and even agencies. It needs to be recognised that an investment of money and time needs to be made for any increase in fundraising and so the cost benefit of this needs to be assessed beforehand. Currently fundraising for the future does not have any time allocated to it within existing funds. To try and build awareness of capacity, small things need to be done such as email signatures added to all staff emails and answer machine messages saying staff only work very part time and so please understand response may not be immediate. Other wider resulting observations The Actif Woods model has become synonymous with Coed Lleol (and perhaps at the expense of the organisations previous work and reputation). This needs to be rectified. The successful creation of Llais y Goedwig by Coed Lleol needs to be better profiled and consideration should be given to trying to create a more formal acknowledgement of this, or even merging the organisations back into. The current separation appears to support fragmentation without an obvious benefit to either organisation.

2. Table: Outcomes, Indicators, Targets and Actuals for Actif Woods Wales April 2013-March 2016 (see following pages)

Actif Woods Wales - Outcomes, Indicators, Targets and actual stats

Top Level Statistics April 2016 - collated since the project began in April 2013 Amie Andrews: Project Coordinator

OUTCOME 1 – People with chronic health conditions will have improved physical and mental wellbeing INDICATORS Target by April

2016 Year 1 and up until now (as far as the database shows) Achieved TARGET?

Number of participants benefitting from the project overall

1,660 participants

1,073 participants have registered since start of the project. Plus 217 from outreach project areas (Flintshire, Gwynedd, Merthyr, Swansea and Bridgend) TOTAL = 1290 *NB original target assumed new participants every 3 months: in reality many participants stay involved long term. Therefore we are reaching fewer people, but can expect deeper and more sustained health impact through long-term engagement. Revised agreed target for outreach is 900-1000, which has now been exceeded.

Down by 370 by original target 0 by revised target Yes, bearing in mind revised target

Number of people expressing improved health through the data

Year 1 – 200 Year 2 - 400 Year 3 - 700

Bangor University Psychology Department secondary analysis of Actif Woods data does show the project having positive impact on all the health measures selected;

This impact is statistically significant and strong with regards to Activity Levels and Mental Wellbeing;

The impact is strongest on those who are least 'well' at baseline, i.e. benefits are progressive.

All qualitative data gathered (individual and collective, attributed and anonymous) indicates improved health and wellbeing in relation to at least one of 5 Ways to Wellbeing: being active, taking notice, learning, giving, connecting, usually several. This includes evidence from numerous consultation and seminar events in 2015-16. As reported last year in April 2015 a survey of 126 current participants found that 100% answered ‘yes’ when asked ‘Has your health or wellbeing been improved through attending Actif Woods Wales sessions?’ - this would suggest that all participants have enjoyed health benefits.

Yes, logically

** Revised target, bearing in mind fewer participants attending for longer (see above) is 500-700 enjoying improved health, evidenced by any one of the above methods and/or 3rd party feedback. Whilst we cannot show (and are unlikely to be able to show) robust proof of impact on this many unique individuals, a balance of the results by the above measures suggests that if we could do this we would be on target or exceeding it.

1000 People attend regularly (50% of sessions within 3 months)

1000 participants

428 participants (unique individuals) have attended regularly over at least 3 months, according to a revised definition of regular (see below).

Bearing in mind the original target expected new participants every 3 months, we can (as in previous reports) translate these figures into ‘instances’ of regular attendance over a 3 month period, bearing in mind those who have attended for longer: this is approximate as it cannot account for all instances e.g. where these cross reporting periods, but the calculable total comes to at least 1,294 instances, which exceeds the target. The revised definition of ‘regular’ is attending an average of one or more session per month, across the relevant time period. This better accounts for different patterns in how sessions are offered, which group(s) participants attend, and actual patterns of participation outside of 12-week programmes.

Yes, by revised definitions and adapting for logic behind the target. No by original definition.

People attend for 12 months or more (25% of total)

415 by end of Year 3

According to the database at least 208 participants have been attending Actif Woods for 12 months or more. This is 28% of the 742 participants who were on the system a year ago (Obviously more recent recruits cannot contribute to this target).

Yes, percentage wise. No by original numerical target

Number of woodland activity sessions with target of 8 – 15 people attending

1,248 by end of Year 3

1,412 activity sessions have been offered in total, with 606 of these taking place in the final year. 9,192 attendances in total, giving an average of 6.5 per session (higher in practice due to last minute cancellation of some sessions). For interest, by the final 6 months this had risen to 7.25 participants per session.

Yes exceeded in terms of sessions offered. No by average attendance.

OUTCOME 2 - Local organisations and activity leaders will have increased skills and capacity to run woodland activities

for people with chronic health conditions INDICATORS Target by April

2016 Year 1 and up until now (as far as the database shows) Achieved TARGET?

3 leaders in each area attend at least 1 training event each year

3 leaders x 5 locations = 15 training days each year = total 45 x 3 years = 45

Year 1 = 98 training sessions across the project Year 2 = 148 training sessions across the project Outdoor First Aid (33) Kelly Kettles (12) Outdoor Cooking & Safe Tool Use (8) Mental Health First Aid (9), Dementia Awareness (1) Autism Awareness (2), Building Relationships (2), Walk Leader (45), Bush craft (8) Foraging (12) Navigation (5), Pollen8 (11) Year 3 = Walk Leader (13 Wrexham, 12 Treherbert, 3 Aberystwyth), Kelly Kettles (25 Anglesey), Outdoor First Aid (10 Anglesey, 3 Treherbert, 8 Aberystwyth), Mindfulness Walking (2), Campfire Cooking & Tool Use (Treherbert 15) National Skill share event (27 people), Expedition Leader (1 Aberystwyth), Minibus Driver (1 Aberystwyth), Welsh Language (1 Aberystwyth), Map Reading (Neath Port Talbot 11), Mindfulness in the Woods (Neath Port Talbot 10, Treherbert 12), Woodland permissions (1), Woodland skills (4), Appreciative Enquiry (6), Year 3 = 165 training session attendances across the project VOLUNTEERS Number of hours spent volunteering to deliver the project is approximately 631. This is an assistant or group leader, depending on the skills and abilities of the person volunteering. Volunteers = Wrexham (3), Anglesey (4), Neath Port Talbot (6), Treherbert (4), Aberystwyth (11)

TOTAL = 411 Yes Exceeded project target by 366 training sessions attendances

2 joint funding bids with partners per region

2 bids x 5 locations = 10 joint funding bids over the whole project)

Year 1 (6 Funding bids) Neath = NPT council 2 funding application ROWIP and Wind Farm

Aber = Mind / Dyfi Woodlands= 2 funding apps – Awards for All and Comic Relief – not successful

Wrexham = Angorfa – Communities First

Anglesey – Let’s Walk Cymru jointly funded the Project Officer post Year 2 (7 funding bids)

Anglesey (AONB SD Fund),

Wrexham (AONB Clwydian and Dee Valley SD Fund) w/ Mind & Groundwork,

Aberystwyth - Oakdale w/ Walking group, Mind Your Heart w/ Mind, Ceredigion

Yes, exceeded target by 3

County Council w/ Tai Ceredigion, Sensory Woodland w/ walking group for visually impaired,

NPT - Wind Farm w/ Biodiversity. Last year 6 funding bids. Year 3

Mind –Arts Council/ Allen Lane Foundation – written but not submitted

2 leaders in each area get OCN accredited learning at level 3 in Social Forestry

2 leaders x 5 locations = 10 OCN level 3’s over the whole project

31 participants (13 in Year 2 & 18 in Year 3), have completed the course to date of whom 23 are working in Wales, the other 8 in England. 11 of the Welsh participants are actively involved in delivering AWW at present:

2 coordination team (country-wide)

5 Aberystwyth

1 Anglesey

1 Treherbert

1 Neath Port Talbot

1 Wrexham And of the other 12 Welsh participants more than half are anticipated to be involved in the next phase of Actif Woods Wales (Flintshire and Gwynedd in particular).

Yes, exceeded target 31 people attended

OUTCOME 3 – Public health professionals and support organisations will be aware of the benefits of and opportunities for health and wellbeing activities in woodlands INDICATORS Target by April

2016 Year 1 and up until now (as far as the database shows) Achieved Target?

30 people per region per year attend project seminars

(30 people x 5 regions 150 people per year – can be same people each year

Year 1 TOTAL = 113 25 Treherbert

26 Neath Port Talbot

32 Wrexham

30 in Aber March 2013 Year 2 – seminar events TOTAL = 136

22 Aberystwyth- November 2014

33 Treherbert and NPT joint seminar- November 2014 (9 NPT, 17 Treherbert, 7 South Wales or National remit)

40 Wrexham – November 2014

41 Anglesey March 2015 - 61 people who approx 20 were participants.

150 this year Yes, Year 3 exceeds the target. In Years 1 and 2 the numbers are slightly lower but more events ran than in the original plan.

Year 3 – seminar events in final 3 months = 241 Aberystwyth - 63

Treherbert - 47

Neath Port Talbot – 30

Wrexham - 39

Anglesey - 62 57 External and Consultation events attended: 1. The Ecotherapy Conference – Aberystwyth (Jo and Adam) 2. The Physical Activity and Nutrition Network of Public Health Wales (Kate and Jo) 3. Conference on National Parks and Nature's Health Service (including the opportunity to publish a book chapter on Actif Woods Wales) (Amie and Kate) Number 1 4. The Public Health Weight Management Network. (Anna – Cardiff) 5. Tir Coed – Harvesting the Knowledge (Aber – Jo) 6. Motiv8 to move (Anglesey – John) 7. Anglesey Woodfest (Anglesey – John) 8. Information Day Hafal (Maggie – NPT) 9. Nature Recovery in Wales (Maggie – NPT) 10. Physical Activity and Ageing (Anna– Cardiff) 11. Health and the Natural Environment (Anna – Cardiff) 12. Cwmanam Community Woodland Project (Treherbert) 13. Cwm Saerbren Steering group (Treherbert) 14. Come Outside Workshop2 (Anna) 15. Come Outside National Network event (Anna on behalf on Amie - Cardiff) 16. Llais Y Goedwig (3 events – Maggie, Anne and Kate) plus Royal Welsh Show 17. Natural Resources Wales (Strategic Equalities event) 19. Natural Resources Wales (Access and Recreation) Amie – Llandrindod 20. National Access Forum (hosted by NRW) Health focus – Kate Hamilton 21. Natural Buzz Conference (Maggie – NPT) 22. Veteran Support Day Neath (Maggie NPT) 23. Natural Resources Communities and Regeneration Strategy (Llandrindod- Amie) 23. ORN Conference (Kate) 24. Cynefin/NRW meeting, Garwnant (Kate) 25. PHW stakeholder day, Aber (Kate)

26. Renew Wales mini-conference, Llanrwst (Kate) 27. Nature and Health conference, Plas Tan y Bwlch Number 2 (Kate) 28. NRW - Strategic Equalities consultation (Anne – Wrexham) 29. AVOW(Anne – Wrexham) 30. Macmillan (Anne – Wrexham) 31. CAIS Open Session (Anne – Wrexham) 32. AVOW Annual Awards event (Anne – Wrexham) 33. Macmillan (Anne – Wrexham) 34. Institute of Chartered Foresters Study Tour (Amie – Machynlleth) 35. Wales Audit Office Good Practice Exchange ‘Future of Parks’ – conference and presentation (Amie, Kate, Anne) - 2 events 36. Mental Health Strategy (North Wales) Anne – Wrexham) 37. Wrexham Well-being Network (Anne – Wrexham) 38. WSAP Wales Advisory Panel meetings– Kate 39. National Parks and Well-being (Plas Tan Yr Bwlch) – Kate 40. Co-production event – barriers to health and outdoor in social / health care– Kate 41. Wales Audit Office Good Practice Exchange – Integrated healthcare 42. Wales Public Health Conference – Kate 43. Motiv8 to Move Caernarfon – John 44. Anglesey Wood Fest – John 45.Veteran Support Day – Neath Port Talbot 46. Public Health Wales – Anna 47. Llynfi 20 Physical Activity /Weight Management Networks – Anna 48. Public Health Wales Network Cymru – Jo 49. Public Health Wales Lifestyle Advocates and Brief intervention training - Jo 50. The Arch North Wales event at Wepre park - Jo 51. West Wales Eco-therapy Network – Jo, Kate, Amie 52. North Wales Mental Health Network – Jo 53. Social Forestry Consultation meeting with Shropshire network – Amie and Kate 54. Llais Y Goedwig Board meeting – Amie 55. Shropshire Outdoor Partnership – Amie 56. West Wales Action for Mental Health – Evaluation workshop – Kate 57. Cynefin Project – Final Celebration - Kate 56. Snowdonia Active - Kate

57. Cross Party Working Group Rural Affairs - Amie 5 press releases and 1 case study per year

15 press releases and 3 case studies by the end of the project)

26 press articles since April 2013. 8 TV or radio items involving Actif Woods Wales

Video Case Study of Aberystwyth participants made by NRW.

Video Case Study of Anglesey partners and groups commissioned by Anglesey AONB and Coed Lleol

1 book chapter for the National Parks, Health & Wellbeing Forum which includes 2 case studies.

1 Journal article for Outdoor Recreation Network.

3 blogs for Wales Audit Office – Good Practice Scheme – includes case study material

TV and Radio publicity

1. Case Study / documentary film produced by NRW 2. Radio Cymru interviewed Anglesey and Aberystwyth welsh speakers 3. BBC Wales – Future Generations Bill – filmed Treherbert as an example of this 4. ITV Wales – filmed the woodland gym in Treherbert ‘Getting fit in the fresh air.’ 5. Vattenfall Film Crew – Martyn’s woodland gym 6. Wrexham Local radio station – Project Officer talking about the activities (Anne

presented) 7. Case Study of partners on Anglesey produced by the AONB and Coed Lleol 8. Radio Cymru – interview about Actif Woods and the Wrexham celebration event

(John Pritchard presented) March 2016

Press Releases: Anglesey

1. LH Mail 30/04/14 ‘Making fitness Fun’ 2. Actif Anglesey Newsletter May 2014 3. Daily Post 2/5/14 4. Anglesey NERS newsletter 5. Anglesey – Actif Woods on Twitter as part of Keep Wales Tidy 6. News Mon – Woodland Enriching Lives

Neath Port Talbot

Yes, exceeding target

7. Port Talbot Magnet 8. In the Loop Magazine 9. FYI Neath 10. NPT Intranet 11. Daily Telegraph January 2015 12. Country Life Magazine 10/02/15

Treherbert 13. Rhondda Housing Association (the Way Ahead), May 2013 14. Rhondda Leader Dec 2013 15. Rhondda Leader 07/08/14 - article on the Cardiff Met Study 16. Rhondda Leader – Article on Big Welsh Walk (May 2016) 17. Rhondda Leader – Story Shop (Aug 2016)

Wrexham 18. Wrexham Leader – 24/01/14 19. Clebran/Talk About – Betsi Cadwalader NHS newsletter January 2014 20. AVOW news article about Joe Cooper’s woodland gym session with weight

management network August 2015

Aberystwyth 21. Article for Autism awareness day March 2014 22. Tir Coed Newsletter November 2014 23. Cambrian News 20/11/14 24. Chartered Forester Winter 2014 25. Brighter Futures Magazine (Tai Ceredigion) June 2015 26. Cambrian News – Celebration Day (March 2016)

Our report being accessed 100 times a month, by the end of the project

Our report being accessed 100 times a month, by the end of the project.

Website: Our best ever day was 182 views in a day. All together we have had 14,889 views. The highest accessed pages are those from each project area (programmes etc.) Website unique views Dec 2015 - May 2016:

December January

February March

April May

Yes, exceeding target -continue to encourage access to website and reports

589 92 124 864 699 713

Facebook: Coed Lleol: 164 likes, highest reach on one day was 263 (www.facebook.com/CoedLleol) Treherbert: 550 likes, highest reach on one day was 5524 (www.facebook.com/ActifWoodsTreherbert) Neath Port Talbot: 147 likes, highest reach on one day was 230 (www.facebook.com/ActifWoodsNPT) Wrexham: 88 likes, highest reach on one day was 390 (www.facebook.com/pages/Actif-Woods-Wrexham/1434985793389459) Anglesey: 166 likes, highest reach on one day was 395 (www.facebook.com/ActifWoodsAnglesey) Aberystwyth Wednesday group 45 likes, highest reach on one day was 43 (www.facebook.com/Actif-Woods-Aberystwyth-Wednesday-Group-644860425575295) Twitter: The project has one Twitter account and has had: 525 Tweets, 341 Followers and we follow 373 accounts. Highest impressions were 17.6 thousand.

Posts are made daily on the account: #ActifWoodsWales and it is managed by Maggie and Jo.

Outcome 4 – Local woodlands will be improved for the benefit of local communities INDICATORS Target by April

2016 Year 1 and up until now (as far as the database shows) Achieved TARGET?

2 improvements in each area in each year

2 improvements x 5 areas x 3 years = 30 improvements over the project).

Number of hours spent improving woodlands = 967 to date Type and number of activities to improve woodlands = TOTAL 132 Year 1 = TOTAL 17 Aberystwyth = 13 improvements

Yes -exceeds target 102

Treherbert = 3 improvements NPT = 1 improvement Year 2 = TOTAL 56 Aberystwyth 19 improvements in 8 different woodlands, Treherbert 3 improvements in 1 woodland, Anglesey 9 improvements in 2 woodlands, NPT 22 improvements in 4 woodlands, Wrexham 3 improvements in 1 woodland Types of activity include: sycamore clearing, felling dangerous tree, weeding forest garden, making tree ID signs, clearing around and mulching new trees, bramble bashing, invertebrate surveys and path clearance, clearing paths to maintain trim trail, Himalayan balsam pulling, litter picking, moving fallen trees, creating habitat piles, honey suckle pulling, push up bench installed for woodland gym and NERS Year 3 = At least 59 improvements across 5 project areas. Including: Bird observation, Plant ID, path clearing, creating steps, litter pick, tree measuring, seed gathering, identification, rhody bashing, clearing sycamore, bramble clearing, Himalayan balsam pulling, collecting broken glass, tidy / clear fire area, fungi ID, bird feeders, bug hotels.

1 woodland agreement per area by the end of the project

5 agreements TOTAL 12 woodland agreements in place. Aberystwyth - 1 (Allt Derw) and approximately 15 via email permission Anglesey- 4 (Coed Llwynon, Pen Rhos, Blaen Y Coed, Coed Cyrnol) Treherbert - 2 (Penyrenglyn & Cwm Saerbren). Wrexham- 3 (Maes Y Pant, National Trust, Newtown Forest – Alyn Waters, Ty Mawr and Bonc yr Hafod) Neath Port Talbot - 2 (Gnoll Country Park, Cwm Du Glen)

Yes, exceeding target by 7