Public Services Boards (PSBs) are required by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 to produce local well-being plans every five years, on the basis of an assessment of well-being needs in their local areas, setting out well-being objectives and proposed steps to meet them.
Following from our previous work in 2021 providing briefings to PSBs to assist them with their well-being assessments, in 2022 the Wales Centre for Public Policy was asked by the Welsh Government to lead a series of workshops for PSBs on ‘what works’ in particular areas of well-being, with the aim of this evidence feeding into the creation of their well-being plans.
We delivered workshops covering the following topics:
WCPP will be building on this work, and previous work for PSBs, by offering continued and enhanced support to PSBs and other public services over the next five years.
PSB well-being assessments identified multi-dimensional poverty as a key barrier to well-being facing many people and communities in their areas. Our workshop covered evidence on effective poverty strategies, area-based interventions to support people at risk of poverty and activities to support long term economic prospects. We also delivered a supplementary workshop looking at how live data dashboards and tools can help PSBs identify and support those in poverty and at risk of poverty.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of communities for improving social well-being, and provided many good practice examples of innovative partnership working across public and voluntary services to support communities. Our workshop provided evidence from several WCPP projects during the pandemic on what public services can do to enable effective community action and enhance community well-being.
WCPP will be building on this work, and previous work for PSBs, by offering continued and enhanced support to PSBs and other public services over the next five years.