"Not fit for purpose"

The idea of encouraging people to make changes to their lifestyle to avoid developing diabetes is attractive to anyone in that position. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. And doing this within a group of people in a similar position opens up a wealth of opportunities. So, in theory this should be a good programme with long term benefits.

In practice the programme delivered by Reed Wellbeing is a total waste of time and money.

The idea of setting targets, reviewing them and discussing issues with other people in the group is sound. But long before the end of the course this became a meaningless paper exercise. Targets were rarely reviewed or challenged and discussion within the group was, at best a token gesture.

At session 6 as part of the Smart Review I wrote, For my successes 'None'. My barriers 'Life'. My solutions 'Die, Starve'. That should have set alarm bells ringing but no one took any notice.

The presentation of the course, which in theory should have been good was uninspiring. The coach would regularly read out questions from one page of the handbook and participants would reluctantly read out the answers on the next page.

Sessions regularly finished well before the 1 1/2 hours they were supposed to take and some activities, for example having a taster of formal relaxation never happened.

The course booklet on page 3 says "......we will be doing this in 13 fun, interactive group sessions". There was nothing "fun" about any of the sessions I attended. The group rarely interacted in a purposeful way, possibly because of the high dropout rate. Which raises the question why do so many people drop out?

Motivation, enjoyment and challenge are key to the success of any programme like this. Sadly these were all missing from the course I attended.

After a successful career in education I consider myself to be pretty good at judging training programmes. If OFSTED had observed any of the sessions I attended they would have graded the majority as inadequate.

I would be interested to know how much the programme costs per person and would suggest this could be better spent elsewhere.

I also look forward to reading a reply to this review. I have noted that non of the negative reviews to date have received one yet.