Community CapitalThe Value of Connected Communities to

Health and Wellbeing

Rowan Conway, Director of Research and Innovation, RSA

11 November 2015

Connected Communities – A study in seven sites• Examination of ways in which community-based networks are

formed, their purpose and function• Map the inter-personal and collective behaviour of these

networks in each site using a social network survey and wellbeing scales (Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale and ONS Life Satisfaction)

• Identify ways of understanding the assets and needs of these local networks Co-design community level interventions to meet local needs

• Evaluate pilot interventions to gauge the economic and wellbeing value of social network interventions

What we asked:

• Where people go locally• What resources, places and groups are used/visited locally• Where people get their information from• Any barriers locally?• Personal networks: who do people rely on?• Help and trust: who do people go to?• Who are the known activists locally?• Who links local people to authority?• Are there any links between networks and wellbeing?

Information pathways were split between people who tended to just go to their friends (the orange crescent)

And people who go to local resources.

These people then tended to split further into:- People who get info

though the Parishes and Dalton le Dale (blue);

- People who get info online/newsletters etc..(red)

- People who go to Glebe, Murton Legion and Murton more generally. (purple)

Question:Where do you go or who do you speak to in order to find out what’s going on in your local area?

(with thanks to Inst. for Social Change, University of Manchester)

Case Study: Murton Mams, East Durham

Case Study: Talk for Health, New Cross

A wellbeing dividend

Participants’ average increase in wellbeing measures after Connected Communities pilot interventions

A wellbeing dividend

• Evaluation of our pilot studies showed an average increase on the ONS scale for the feeling that life is worthwhile of 21.68%.

• Mental Wellbeing on the Shorter Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale increased by 19.35%.

• Subjective life satisfaction rose by 14.75% - In the case of Murton Mams life satisfaction among participants rose by 20.8% in six months.

• Anecdotal wellbeing dividends for individuals included significant weight loss, more than one participant reporting that they had stopped needing anti-depressant medication, and reported knock-on benefits to children and other family members.

• In one intervention, reductions in participants’ use of certain NHS services resulted in savings of 34% in economic analysis carried out by LSE researchers.

Community Capital and Wellbeing

• Social relationships themselves function as assets in generating wellbeing dividends. We call this community capital: the sum of assets including relationships in a community and the value that accrues from these.

• Data form the ONS Understanding Society study show that people who say they have no friends or only one friend are 8% more likely to report low life satisfaction than those with between two and ten friends.

• Our data from a survey of 2,840 respondents in our seven research sites revealed that relationships are the key to wellbeing – more so than social status or life circumstances.

- People who lacked social connections were more likely to report low subjective wellbeing than people who have a long term illness, are unemployed, or are a single parent.- Feeling part of a community was the factor most significantly associated with higher wellbeing – and appeared to be a buffer against the negative wellbeing effects of other risk factors such as long-term illness and being a single parent.

Theory of change: Understand Involve Connect

We suggest that community capital can be grown through a mode of intervention – from public services and others with a strategic role – that adheres to the Connected Communities principles of Understanding the local context, relationships and patterns of isolation, Involving the potential beneficiaries of an intervention in its production, and aiming to Connect people to one another through platforms that broker or weave networks.

Thank youRowan.conway@rsa.org.uk