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Our work on children's agency in research has had three impacts:
This approach has been replicated in Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway and Qatar. The CRC website hosts 150 successful projects by children and young people, and through the Diana Award more than 1500 children were supported in their research on cyberbullying.
Since 2006 the University of East Anglia (UEA) has led a series of Government commissioned studies of all Serious Case Reviews of child death and serious injury in England. This work has provided the largest national database of analyses of child deaths and serious injury where abuse or neglect are known or suspected.
Since 2008, the findings have informed public understanding, practitioner thinking, multi-agency child protection practice, policy and law - in the UK, and internationally. Both key child protection policy and practice reviews commissioned by the UK Government 2008-13, the Laming report (2009) and the Munro Review of Child Protection (2011), drew on this research.
In a contemporary world preoccupied with the protection of children, it is profoundly shocking to learn that child labour played a key part in Britain's industrial revolution. Indeed that this pioneer economic transition would not have happened in the way that it did without child labour. Jane Humphries draws this startling conclusion from a study of more than 600 working-class autobiographies. These offer unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Seen from below, through the eyes of history's everyman, the costs and benefits of industrialization acquire new edge. The impact of Humphries' work has been to change public understanding of this momentous divide by integrating humanity back into economic history and trauma back into the Industrial Revolution.
Research conducted at UEL on the protection, participation and welfare of children living in difficult circumstances in the aftermath of conflict and in contexts of urban and rural poverty has had wide-ranging impacts on international policy and practice. Benefits have arisen particularly from its influence on national policies for orphans and vulnerable children in Rwanda; on international professional standards and `best practice'; and on legal asylum in the USA. It has been used directly by governmental policymakers in Rwanda and Bangladesh and aid organisations in Africa and Asia, and has formed the basis for the development of new learning and advocacy resources used to improve the services offered by social work professionals in Africa, Asia and the UK. Through its direct impact on these individuals and organisations, the research has delivered indirect benefits to millions of children and adults around the world.
In a continuing policy focus on the family, both the current coalition government and its Labour predecessor have emphasised the value of re-integrating fathers into the family unit. For over 20 years our research has helped the UK government understand the role and importance of fathers to children's development. We have made concrete recommendations about the focus (i.e., the what and how) of initiatives designed to promote fathering. Our impact includes a tenfold increase in funding for work with fathers in Children's Centres and the pivotal influence of one study in parental responsibility granted to over two million unmarried fathers.
EPPSE is a Government-funded, high profile, longitudinal study with a multi-disciplinary design and numerous outputs, almost unprecedented in the UK in terms of its scale and scope. It has become a seminal study of the influence of early education on children's later development. Findings have been used in the UK and internationally for:
The two Principal Investigators at the IOE have taken lead roles in all of the above.
Research at York undertaken by Bradshaw, Skinner, Corden and Davidson, directly influenced child support policy throughout the period 2008-2013, informing the radical change that abolished the Child Support Agency and returned child maintenance to the hands of parents to make private agreements under the `Child Maintenance and Other Payments' Act 2008. It also contributed to the decision to disregard child support payments and thus allow child support to increase lone parent incomes and reduce child poverty. More recently our research has contributed to the evolution of policy under the Coalition Government in the 2012 `Welfare Reform' Act, which introduced new `relationship support' services to improve co-parenting relationships, reduce conflict and improve child well-being.
Research by the University of Reading's Martin Parsons (Research Fellow 1990-date) on the separation of children from their parents during the Second World War is being used to inform organisations on how to deal with the anxieties experienced by children separated from their parent(s) following their military deployment. The research has gained wide recognition from the media, local authorities and policy makers and has already led one school to re-develop its pastoral and academic support systems, creating a successful learning environment for Service Children and paving the way for further trials of teaching materials geared towards such children both in the UK and overseas.
Christine Skinner (submitted under UoA:20 Law) has produced research with colleagues over an eighteen-year period that has impacted significantly on the development of child maintenance law and practice throughout the period 2008-13. Through various methods, her body of work and research expertise have informed the radical re-design of the UK child maintenance system, with a shift from a coercive, administratively imposed system to one that stresses parental negotiation and agreement. Equally, her work has directly influenced the development of a support infrastructure to underpin the new system's implementation. These impacts in turn benefit separating parents and the well-being of their children (estimated at 30% of all UK dependent children).
Young Lives is identifying major influences on children's development, from infancy to adulthood, by carrying out a pioneering longitudinal study across four developing countries over 15 years. Young Lives gathers and analyses data on how childhood is changing in diverse communities, especially through the impact of economic, cultural and policy shifts, by studying two age cohorts in each country. UNICEF, the World Bank, Plan International, and Save the Children International, among others, are using Young Lives research to design childhood poverty-reduction policies in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The research also underpins the re-visioning of global child protection work by UNICEF, Save the Children Canada, and World Vision UK.