Wellbeing Workshops Devon CIC

Educate • Empower • Create Change • Promote Equality

Wellbeing Workshops Devon CIC is a not-for-profit organisation developing and delivering preventative, psychologically informed mental health and wellbeing interventions within communities.

We believe that improving mental health and wellbeing requires more than focusing on the individual. People’s wellbeing is shaped by their relationships, communities, opportunities and wider social and economic circumstances. Our work therefore seeks to understand and respond to current community needs, address inequalities and increase access to psychological knowledge and skills.

Our approach brings together evidence, psychological theory, pedagogical principles, practitioner expertise, community voice and lived experience. These foundations inform how we understand a problem, how we believe meaningful change may happen and how we design, deliver and evaluate interventions in response.

Developed with communities, responsive to communities

For more than five years, our interventions have developed through working directly with communities. The experiences, priorities and feedback of the people we work alongside have continually shaped our content, resources and approach to delivery.

This has enabled us to develop established interventions with defined psychological foundations, learning aims and intended outcomes while avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.

Our interventions have a defined, evidence-informed core with flexible and responsive delivery. We retain the components and mechanisms that give an intervention its purpose while adapting language, examples, activities, accessibility, emphasis and methods of engagement according to the group and context in front of us.

Community voice and lived experience remain part of this process. We create opportunities for participants and communities to identify priorities, inform delivery and tell us what is and is not working. Professional responsibility for intervention design, evidence, safety and quality remains with us.

Evidence-based practice

Evidence is not something we add after an intervention has been designed; it underpins the development of our work from the beginning.

We draw on relevant psychological and wider research to understand the needs or problems an intervention is seeking to address, identify plausible mechanisms through which change may occur and select approaches that are appropriate to the population and context.

Our work draws particularly on psychoeducation, coaching psychology and positive psychology, alongside other relevant psychological theories and evidence according to the purpose of an intervention.

We also recognise the importance of practice-based evidence. We systematically evaluate our work using appropriate quantitative and qualitative methods, participant feedback, community voice and reflective practice. This allows us to examine outcomes, identify unintended effects, understand what appears to support or constrain change and continually refine our interventions.

We are interested not only in asking “Did something change?”, but also “How did change happen, for whom, under what circumstances, and what may have enabled or prevented it?”

Theory of change

We use theories of change to connect evidence with practice.

Rather than beginning with a collection of workshop topics, we consider the need or inequality being addressed, the population and context, the change we hope to contribute to and the evidence about what may support that change.

From this, we identify the activities, psychological and learning processes, potential mechanisms of change, intended outcomes, contextual influences and assumptions that underpin an intervention.

This means our theories of change are contextual rather than one-size-fits-all. We recognise that participation in an intervention does not automatically produce an outcome. People’s opportunities to apply learning can be enabled or constrained by their relationships, resources, environments, health, wider systems and other circumstances.

Our theories of change therefore provide a transparent and testable explanation of how and why an intervention is expected to contribute to change, while recognising uncertainty and allowing our understanding to develop as further evidence emerges.

Psychology meets pedagogy

Knowing what psychological information to provide is only part of effective intervention design. We also consider how people learn.

Our approach is therefore underpinned by pedagogical principles as well as psychological theory. We use approaches including explicit teaching, modelling, scaffolding, differentiation, reflection, discussion, relevant real-world scenarios, skills practice and opportunities to apply and revisit learning.

Learning is progressively structured so that participants can move beyond simply receiving information towards understanding it, relating it to their own experiences, reflecting on existing patterns, practising different approaches and applying learning within their lives.

This is particularly important within psychoeducation. Information alone does not necessarily create meaningful or sustained change; people need opportunities to engage with psychological knowledge, make sense of it, practise skills and translate learning into personally meaningful action.

Psychologically safe by design

How change is supported matters as much as what is taught.

Psychological safety is considered throughout the design and delivery of our interventions. Our practice is trauma- and shame-informed and seeks to protect autonomy, dignity, choice and inclusion.

Participants are not expected to disclose personal experiences in order to learn. We use flexible methods of engagement, clear boundaries, appropriate group agreements and skilled facilitation to create environments in which people can explore ideas, reflect and develop skills without judgement or unnecessary psychological risk.

Psychological safety is not separate from learning: we consider it an important condition that can influence whether people are able to engage with, reflect on and apply what they learn.

Learning, evaluating and creating change

We do not assume that because an intervention is theoretically informed, it works.

We evaluate our work and use findings to refine both our interventions and the theories of change that underpin them. Over time, this allows us to build a stronger understanding of which components should remain consistent, what can be adapted, what conditions support engagement and application, and where our assumptions about change need to be reconsidered.

Our aim is to bridge research, psychological theory, education and community practice: translating evidence into accessible learning, listening to the communities we serve, testing our assumptions and continually developing our interventions in response.

Through this approach, we aim to educate and empower individuals, create meaningful and sustainable change, and contribute to greater equality in mental health and wellbeing.

The change we aim to create

Ultimately, our work is about translating psychological knowledge into meaningful change for individuals and communities.

At an individual level, we aim to increase psychological knowledge and understanding, self-awareness, emotional literacy, confidence and the practical skills people can use to manage their wellbeing. Rather than telling people what they should do, we aim to increase their understanding, agency and perceived choice so they are better equipped to make informed decisions and apply learning in ways that are meaningful within their own lives.

At a relational level, we aim to support healthier communication, boundaries, relationships and connection. Developing greater understanding of ourselves and others can create opportunities to respond more intentionally, communicate needs, navigate difficulties and build healthier ways of relating.

At a community level, we aim to increase access to psychological knowledge and preventative support, strengthen connection and ensure communities have a meaningful voice in the interventions designed for them. By delivering within familiar and accessible community settings, we seek to reduce some of the barriers that can prevent people from accessing opportunities to learn about and support their mental health and wellbeing.

At a wider inequalities level, we recognise that mental health does not exist separately from people’s circumstances. Poverty, discrimination, social exclusion, unequal access to resources and other structural conditions can influence both wellbeing and people’s capacity to create change. Our interventions cannot remove these inequalities alone, and we do not place responsibility for structural problems onto individuals. Instead, we aim to respond to identified inequalities, increase access to knowledge and support, amplify community voice and equip people with resources and skills that may strengthen their agency within the circumstances in which they live.

Empowering people

For us, empowerment is not about prescribing a particular version of wellbeing. It is about making psychological knowledge more accessible and giving people opportunities to understand themselves, develop skills, recognise their strengths and needs, and increase the choices available to them. Giving them a voice. 

Creating change

We recognise that knowledge alone does not necessarily create change. Our interventions therefore provide opportunities to reflect, practise, apply and revisit learning. We aim to support movement from understanding to application, while recognising that meaningful change is often gradual and influenced by people’s relationships, resources and wider circumstances. It also gives teh community a deeper understanding of what changes they can make within public health. 

Promoting equality

We aim to direct our work towards communities and groups experiencing greater inequalities, barriers to support or increased risk of poor mental health. We listen to community voice and lived experience, adapt interventions to different needs and contexts, and work to make psychologically informed learning accessible beyond traditional psychological and clinical settings.

The longer-term change we want to contribute to is greater access to psychological knowledge and preventative support, increased individual and community agency, improved mental health and wellbeing, healthier relationships and communities, and reduced inequalities in who has the opportunity and resources to thrive.

Educate. Empower. Create Change. Promote Equality.