ABOUT THE CENTRE
The What Works Centre for Wellbeing’s vision is of a future where the wellbeing of people and communities improves year on year and wellbeing inequalities are reduced.
The Centre believes that improving wellbeing should be the ultimate objective of policy and community action.
The Centre’s mission is to develop and share robust, accessible and useful evidence that governments, businesses, communities and people use to improve wellbeing across the UK.
Approach
Independent: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing acts as an impartial convener of people with different views and perspectives, and speaks up about findings – both when they confirm accepted wisdom and when they challenge it.
Evidence based: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing aims to be evidence-based in what it does. The Centre believes that decision making should be informed by the best possible evidence, and that everyone has a role in contributing their findings on what works. The Centre brings together the best evidence from wellbeing research to help guide actions that improve people’s lives.
Collaborative: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing works in partnership, where possible, building on and using the best work in the field wherever it’s done. The Centre adds value by connecting academics, organisations, decision makers and individuals in meaningful and productive conversation and action.
Practical: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing is focused on what organisations can do to improve wellbeing, producing evidence that is actively useful and valuing learning from practice. The Centre listens to a wide range of people, and share evidence in ways that is accessible, relevant and useful.
Open: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing aims to encourage new ideas and approaches to its mission. The Centre recognises that there are different views about wellbeing, and that the discipline is evolving – therefore welcomes this diversity. The Centre is open to what it can learn from a range of approaches and findings.
Transparent: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing aims to be as open and transparent as possible about its work, so that others can do it too.
Iterative: The What Works Centre for Wellbeing aims to learn from experience, and encourages others to do the same by investing in new approaches to understanding and improving wellbeing. The Centre believes that creating robust evidence is a journey and that each step is worthwhile. In so doing, it supports others on their journey so we can build better evidence of wellbeing together.
We work with a network of world-leading wellbeing researchers, policy makers and practitioners to bring together the best available evidence on wellbeing, and communicate it in a way that is accessible, timely and useful.
Further information about the Centre is available on our website.
THE WHAT WORKS NETWORK
The What Works Centre for Wellbeing is part of the What Works Centre network. The What Works Centres have been set up as independent centres with the aim to bridge between research knowledge (evidence) and practice for key decision-makers in the UK. This initiative aims to improve the way Government and other organisations adopt and generate evidence for more effective decision-making.
The overall aim of all Centres is to translate and make the best available evidence accessible, implementable and measurable, whilst continuing to contribute to evidence generation through assessing impact and learning from the implementation and adaptation of the existing evidence.
