 Our digital inclusion activity has had a strong focus over the past few months on the link between digital and health, culminating in two new reports. Living Digitally – An Evaluation of the CleverCogs Care and Support System examines the impact of a new digital system implemented by a major Scottish housing and care provider, designed to increase digital inclusion and the use of technology enabled care. The report was debated in the Scottish Parliament, led by Minister Kate Forbes MSP.
Meanwhile, in partnership with Wales Cooperative Centre we launched our new report Digital Inclusion in Health and Care in Wales, written by Bob Gann, the former programme Director of Widening Digital Participation at NHS England. The report was launched Digital Health and Care Conference Wales, where later that day the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care Services in Wales, Vaughan Gething AM, announced a £3 million investment to tackle this issue.
 We’re continuing our work supporting the UK public library sector, and we were very excited to launch Leading the Way, a new library privacy guide in partnership with Newcastle Libraries and CILIP the library and information association. The guide aims to help UK public libraries, as highly trusted, safe spaces at the heart of communities, play a leading role in protecting and promoting people’s privacy. Continuing the libraries theme, we are pleased to be supporting a new initiative to establish a stronger future for public libraries across England. Led by Libraries Connected and CILIP, the project will explore different options for how libraries could be funded, managed and delivered in the years ahead.
Finally in libraries news, we held a celebration event for the 16 public libraries taking part in our Engaging Libraries programme to deliver health and wellbeing public engagement events. Achievements from the projects were wide ranging, with a play commissioned by Oldham Libraries’ project Comics and Cosplay being used as a corporate training tool for Oldham Council, and City of London Libraries winning the Town Clerk’s Award for their project Release the Pressure.
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 November saw the publication of Julia Unwin’s Fellowship report ‘Kindness, emotions and human relationships: The blindspot in public policy’. The report was featured on BBC Four Thought and Civil Service World. We followed this up on World Kindness Day with our new data on kindness in communities and from public services which draws attention to the differences in experiences of kindness across the UK and between different socio-economic groups.
 Taking forward our work on embedding wellbeing at the heart of government the team have been hosting and speaking at international events, including a fantastic event with our partner organisation the Carnegie Council for International Ethics in New York. We invited participants from our Northern Ireland programme to speak about their experiences and to learn from practice in North America. Our CEO, Martyn, sums up the experience in this blog.
And if you’re looking for some policy reading this Christmas, look out for our Head of Policy, Jen Wallace’s new book Wellbeing and Devolution: Reframing the Role of Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Hard copies are available in the new year but open access copies are available here.
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We held our final event in the Twin Towns programme in North Shields in October, with thanks to all our partners who have worked hard to explore synergies and new ways of working throughout the programme. The full report will be available in the new year.
Our two data and towns projects continue, with the relaunch of Understanding Scotland’s Places during Scotland’s Towns Week in November. In Wales, the consortium developing Understanding Welsh Places has been hard at work developing their ambitions for the website, going into active development in early 2019.
Carnegie Associate, Professor Duncan MacLennan, author of our Brexit and Towns report has been speaking at events around the UK advocating for a greater voice for towns in public policy making. The team will be taking forward a new project in 2019 on advocacy for towns.
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 It’s been a busy few months for our continuing campaign to improve the availability of affordable credit for people across the UK. We were absolutely delighted to make the first investment from our Affordable Credit Loan Fund in Fair For You, a not-for-profit lender, who have received £500,000 to help them scale up their operations. We’ve launched three new research reports: on young people and credit; where people who previously borrowed from payday loan companies are now accessing money; and on the use of savings and credit across Scotland. And we’ve continued our advocacy campaign, with a packed stakeholder seminar at our office in Dunfermline; a parliamentary roundtable at the Scottish Parliament with Responsible Finance and Scotcash; and with a series of presentations across the UK by our team as part of Talk Money Week 2018.
 We were in Dublin in November for a roundtable event to share the findings from our new Fulfilling Work in Ireland report. We were very pleased to work with Dublin-based Think Tank for Action on Social Change (TASC) on the roundtable and which was well attended by representatives from Ireland’s policy, charity, trade union, academic and business sectors.
 Finally, the Trust launched Making Procurement Work for All at an event in Newcastle attended by stakeholders and policy makers from across the North East of England. The new research, carried out for the Trust by Durham University, explores current practice and ‘good work’ procurement barriers and success factors. The report was welcomed by the newly formed North of Tyne Combined Authority, who, will now work with the Trust and Durham University to develop the procurement element of their Good Work Business Pledge.
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