Outcomes map: Personal and social well-being

Personal and social well-being describes a person’s state of mind, relationship with the world around them, and the fulfilment they get from life. It can be understood as how people feel and how they function, both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives as a whole. It is linked to a range of other outcomes, including mental health.

Well-being matters to the education system, in the health service, to parks and community spaces and in macro-economic policy. It is a concept that can be used to measure and evaluate outcomes across a variety of contexts.

Well-being is everyone’s issue as it offers a broad measure of progress by individuals and communities.

Well-being has been a pre-occupation of psychologists for decades but has recently come to the fore in debates around social policy in the UK and beyond. For charities, well-being has always been at the heart of what they do. The sector has broadly welcomed the emphasis on well-being as it lives them a richer language to articulate what they do, as well as new methods to capture ‘soft outcomes’. For example, NPC’s Well-being Measure is used by around 50 charities to measure and evaluate interventions ranging from outdoor activity courses to mentoring.