Oxford Community Wellbeing Survey

Wednesday, 22 February 2017 14:31

Over 100 people attended the Oxford Community Wellbeing Survey session in Ingersoll this morning.

INGERSOLL - Over 100 people were at the Fusion Youth Centre in Ingersoll this morning to hear the results of the Oxford Community Wellbeing Survey.

During the course of the morning the attendee's, split up into to groups to look at ways to address some of the concerns raised in the survey. This was one of the first consultation meetings on the results of the survey that was handed out last year. The Oxford Community Wellbeing Survey was done in conjunction with Future Oxford and the University of Waterloo.

Director of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing Bryan Smale says Oxford Counties results line up pretty well against other communities.

"They do better in some areas like sense of belonging, they have some challenges that are well known like the quality and access to health care services. Being a predominantly rural area that is always going to be a bit of a challenge."

60.3 percent of the respondents in the survey said they had a positive Wellbeing in Oxford County. On the other side, Oxford's most dissatisfied group, according to the report, are those making under 40 thousand dollars a year. They were more likely to be unhappy at work, less likely to join in with community activities, and had fewer close friends.

Steering committee member and the Executive Director of United Way Oxford Kelly Gillson says we are already seeing local municipalities use the results in this survey to help make life better for their residents.

"Rick Cox from the town of Tillsonburg spoke this morning about how his team, the recreation department at the town of Tillsonburg is using the information and how they are tweaking some of their programs and looking at times because that was identified in the survey. People would say well that might be a great program but the time didn't allow people to get there because of their work life balance."

Consultation and discussion will focus on five key themes: community engagement, accessibility, quality of work, health behaviours and perceptions, and geographic location.

The full report and an infographic summary of key survey results is available online at www.futureoxford.ca.