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GOOD AND BAD HELP

HOW PURPOSE AND CONFIDENCE TRANSFORM LIVES

This report is about the difference between good and bad help.

Good Help equips people to take positive action to improve their lives. It involves listening carefully to what matters to people, what’s going on in their lives, their skills and motivations, and it strengthens their sense of what is possible.

By contrast, many mainstream public services and social programmes continue to offer ‘bad help’ that tries to fix things for people in the short term or encourages them to take action that fits with the service’s priorities and not their own.

In this report we have drawn on a well-established evidence base and worked with practitioners to understand how Good Help is applied in practice.