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Of the 200,000 offenders supervised in the community by Probation Area Trusts (PATs) in England and Wales, around half are reconvicted of another offence within two years. University of Sheffield research into why people stop offending (`desistance'), funded by the ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust, has provided evidence to senior staff in PATs, government departments, and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) enabling the development of initiatives aimed at supporting service users in their efforts to desist. The research has increased awareness and understanding on the part of professionals of the factors associated with desistance. Through the medium of a film about how people desist, the research has helped both to reinvigorate probation services' professional practice and to develop training programmes with an emphasis on helping people to stop offending in place of the hitherto dominant focus on enforcement.
This collaboration between the UoE and six local authorities developed social work interventions to improve engagement with `involuntary' services users. The impact of the research is seen in the sharing and implementation of knowledge about `what worked' within and across the participating local authorities and in gradually shifting practice cultures within these authorities. The impact is evident at several levels:
Research needs to engage with global environmental challenges more effectively. How to achieve this has been the focus of studies by academics at Newcastle with their expertise recognised in the appointment in 2003 of Philip Lowe and Jeremy Phillipson to lead the £26million Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (Relu), funded by three Research Councils, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Scottish Government. The Directorship allowed Lowe and Phillipson to experiment with innovative processes for the conduct of research in 94 projects funded under the programme, in particular through instigating ideas of interdisciplinarity and co-production, and to develop techniques for assessing the efficacy of such methods. The insights gained from this effort have had significant and widespread impact on science policy and on organisations responses to environmental challenges such as government departments and agencies (DEFRA, Scottish Office and Food Standards Agency, for example), PLCs (including Wessex Water and M&S), environmental Trusts and more.
For the last two decades, sociologists at Lancaster have demonstrated the centrality of social organisation and practice for climate change policy. This case study focuses on the impact of Elizabeth Shove's research in particular. Shove's work challenges the prevailing emphasis on individual attitudes and behaviours and shows that the consumption of energy, water and other natural resources is an outcome of shared social practices. Through innovative forms of interaction and collaboration ("working parties"; exhibitions, etc.) Shove has inspired organisations such as WWF, the Environment Agency, DECC, DCLG, DEFRA, the Scottish Government and the International Energy Agency to take social practices seriously as topics of policy, planning and intervention. Individual behavioural models are no longer the only point of reference in policy design.
A theme within Professor David Mosse's anthropological research focuses on the relationship between policy, practice and effects in international development. His field-based ethnographic research challenges assumptions about policy implementation and the nature of success and failure in aid programming. His novel approach to questions of policy analysis and policy change has been widely influential on thinking among policymakers and practitioners across a range of organisations, sectors and countries. It has enhanced the capacity for adaptive self-critical understanding of the aid process among practitioners and aid organisations, while also demonstrating the importance of researcher-practitioner engagement in improving the delivery of aid and development programmes.
As a direct result of methodological research led by Professor Ray Pawson at Leeds, `realist evaluation' has provided a new lens through which to assess and develop social programmes. It has critically changed the apparatus of evidenced-based policy and the way in which policy research is commissioned and utilised. Through advisory work, training package provision, partnership-research and professional exchange, this `realist' perspective has formed a new standard in social programme evaluation, and is used by commissioners in the UK and internationally to frame their interventions across policy domains, including education, environment, criminal justice, and health and social care.
The research findings improved the comparative evidence base used by policy makers, providers and advocacy organisations when designing and delivering contracted out welfare to work programmes in the UK, including the development of service user safeguards implemented through the Department of Work and Pensions `Commissioning Strategy' and Work Programme (which will cater for over 3 million unemployed participants between 2011 and 2016). The research findings have also had a wider impact in informing policy makers, providers and user groups in other countries that have introduced or are introducing such contracting systems.
The research has explored the impact of welfare transformations on the activities of social workers on the frontline. A key concern has been to explore the gap between, on the one hand, social work ethical statements and the commitments of practitioners on entering the field and, on the other, the workplace reality of marketization, austerity driven cuts and a range of restrictions placed on workers by new regulatory regimes. The research explores the potential, internationally, for a new `engaged' social work practice that draws service users, carers, academics, and practitioners together in defence of good quality, value driven social work.
Work-related stress and work-life conflict are the biggest health and safety challenges in the UK with considerable costs to the economy as well as employees and their families. Research conducted by Professor Kinman over the last 15 years has made a significant contribution to enhancing knowledge of the mechanisms underpinning work-related well-being and ways in which this can be enhanced. In recognition of the unique nature of Kinman's work, the UoB is widely recognised as a centre of excellence in this field. Kinman has advised organisations, predominantly in the public sector, on ways to manage stress and enhance work-life balance and resilience. The significance and reach of this work has been demonstrated, most notably with academic employees and social workers. It has been used to develop interventions and informed changes to policy and practice at a national level in these sectors.
Traditionally offender rehabilitation has been understood as a top-down process through which deficits are `corrected'. Maruna is the primary source of a `strengths-based' or `good lives' approach to rehabilitation. This is based on his research into how individuals successfully desist from crime of their own volition. The reach and significance of Maruna's research is demonstrated by surveys of those professionals involved in rehabilitation which suggest that this approach now underpins the practice of up to one quarter of treatment interventions internationally (McGrath et al 2010). The US Department of Justice (2011) has recently funded a $1.5 million pilot test of "desistance theory" explicitly "based on Maruna's trans-theoretical model" (see Section 5, below). This approach has also been widely adopted in England and Wales. As the Director responsible for commissioning all prison and probation services there comments: "I can with confidence say that research carried out by Shadd Maruna into desistance from crime has significantly impacted both policy and operational practice, ... and is shaping the culture and service delivery models of providers across all aspects of the offender services market" (Letter, Commissioning and Commercial Director NOMS, in QUB REF Archive, see Sect 5).