The Value of Living Well

The Living Well programme, delivered by the Mental Health Foundation and the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, generated £3.7 million in wellbeing benefits for people living with chronic conditions.

People with long-term health conditions, like diabetes or cancer, are more likely to experience mental health problems. During the COVID pandemic, many people had to deal with this alone. The Living Well programme was designed in response to this.

The programme was delivered through several partner organisations that support people living with long-term health conditions. It empowered partners to focus more on supporting long-term mental health and wellbeing, helping them improve the support they provide to clients.

The three-year programme has now ended, and BiGGAR Economics was pleased to be invited to quantify its impact as part of the programme evaluation.

A Good Return on Investment

Using a wellbeing valuation approach, we found that over three years the programme generated health and wellbeing impacts valued at £3.7 million. This means every £1 invested in the Living Well programme generated £8.60 in wellbeing benefits.

Most (£3.2 million) of these benefits were experienced by those supported by the programme. These impacts were quantified based on research evidence that shows:

  • mental health support can improve the emotional and physical health of people with chronic conditions;
  • self-care interventions delivered by non-medical professionals can improve health outcomes; and
  • regularly attending a support group can improve life satisfaction.

But the benefits of the programme were not limited to those living with chronic conditions.

Support Staff and Volunteers

The Living Well Programme also provided training for the staff and volunteers responsible for supporting people with chronic conditions and opportunities for people to volunteer. We estimated that, taken together, this generated wellbeing benefits worth around £0.5 million.

These benefits were estimated based on research evidence that shows on-the-job training and volunteering directly improve wellbeing.

Learning new skills can empower people to become better at what they do, making them feel more confident at work and improving their job satisfaction.

Volunteering is similarly good for wellbeing. It can help people build social connections, find meaning and fulfilment, develop new skills and become more confident.

But the full value of the training provided has almost certainly not been realised yet. By training people who support those living with chronic conditions, the Living Well programme helped build capacity in partner organisations to continue providing enhanced support in the future. This means the benefits of Living Well are likely to continue long after the programme has finished.

Further Information

You can find out more about Living Well, download our full report and the wider evaluation here: https://www.alliance-scotland.org.uk/blog/news/tools-in-the-toolbox/

To talk to us about our wellbeing valuation work, please get in touch at wellbeing@biggareconomics.co.uk

Posted 24.04.25

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