Happiness matters

2020 has been such a difficult year, with the care sector facing significant challenges from COVID-19. The Social-Ability team wanted to place great emphasis on making a difference for Christmas 2020 with the Happiness Programme. We wanted to make the thousands of people living in care happier over the holidays.

So, in late November we released a dozen or so Christmas games with this ambition. Following this release, we surveyed our subscribers to understand the impact we’d had. The results have been nothing short of spectacular and we are delighted that the happiness levels of those living in care and using the Happiness Programme has been so positively impacted.

How the results were gathered

We asked care teams to rate their resident’s happiness levels both before and after sessions during the 6-week festive period. And the results showed resident’s happiness levels increased by 54%.

What do the results mean

When we started Social-Ability (more about our story here), we wanted to bring best-in-class activities and demonstrable impact to the care organisations subscribing to it. We also knew we wanted a single aim, or target, that the Happiness Programme would strive for; an increase in the levels of happiness of residents across the UK.

We call this our social impact.

And so, we designed a process and a service that would deliver on this, helping to give care organisations real depth and insight into the Happiness Programme’s impact – for care organisations themselves to deliver better, more personalised activities and to provide an evidence base for this impact, which would help satisfy the various UK regulator’s requirements.

You can find out more about this on our reporting page. 

These results build on similar surveys we’ve carried out with our subscribers, using the different elements of our reporting package to achieve a balanced view.

We use these results to underpin our planning for future changes and enhancements and it serves as motivation to the Social-Ability team focused on that central aim of increasing levels of happiness.

The last word

We also asked our subscribers whether they’d recommend us, scoring us out of 10. Again, the results were emphatic.

94% told us they’d be extremely likely to recommend the Happiness Programme, with no single score being lower than 8 out of 10.

We’re incredibly happy with the results but the journey’s only just begun. We use the feedback we receive to constantly improve the Happiness Programme further and to deliver the impact we set out to achieve.

Not a member of the Happiness Programme?

The Happiness Programme is a first-of-its-kind initiative helping to change the lives of people living with cognitive challenges. We use interactive light technology to provide meaningful activities for residents and patients in care homes and care settings.  For more detail on what the Happiness Programme is and how it’s helping care venues across the UK, visit our getting started page.

Alternatively, jump to our dementia, learning disability and NHS pages for more specific detail on how it’s helping care homes like Barchester and HC-One as well as hospitals and local authorities such as St George’s Hospital, London and Westminster and South Kensington Council.

For anything else, you can contact us here too.