Log in
1. Between 2006-10 Open University (OU) researchers Aldgate and Rose worked with the Scottish government to develop a rights and research-based national framework, Getting it Right for Every Child. Significant parts of this framework have now been included in the Children and Young People Bill (2013), to become law in 2014. Aldgate's research into kinship care led to the introduction, in 2010, of allowances for children who are looked after within the kinship care system.
2. Rose also worked with the Welsh government to develop and implement a national framework for learning and reviewing child protection policy and practice. Statutory regulations were laid and statutory guidance was issued for their implementation from 1 January 2013.
These developments have attracted international interest.
UNICEF estimate that over 3,500 children die annually from abuse and neglect in economically developed countries, including 100 in the UK of whom around 4 are from Northern Ireland. Although the number of deaths appears to be falling in the UK, the rate of decline is slowing. This case study describes the impact of three related pieces of research undertaken for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People. The aim was to identify the things that policy makers and practitioners could do differently in order to protect children better, and has led to significant improvements into how reviews are undertaken, and in the child protection policies and practices in Northern Ireland. As a result children have been better protected by child welfare professionals.
Research conducted by Peter Elfer has shown the significance of attention to babies and under threes' emotional well-being in nursery if early learning is to be effective. Children who are continually anxious or distressed do not learn well. A sensitive, responsive and consistent relationship with mainly one or two members of nursery staff (now known as the child's `key-person') has been shown to promote in young children feelings of safety and security. The research has underpinned the development of the key-person role in nurseries, as the means for enabling individual attention to children. This research has had a significant impact in the following areas:
1) UK Government curriculum guidance and requirements
2) Training of the early years workforce and continuing professional development
3) The evolution of UK Coalition Government policy and public discourse
The reach of the research is extensive, providing the underpinning for attachment practice in English nurseries. The above developments have strengthened the expectation in national standards of greater attention to the emotions of babies and young children in nursery and have provided the detailed guidance on how this can be achieved in practice.
Between 2009 and 2012 Clemens Sedmak was lead coordinator of a research project in collaboration with the international development NGO `SOS Children's Villages International'. Founded in 1949, this organisation is a service provider in the areas of care, education and health for children, as well as a child rights actor advocating for vulnerable children's rights. It runs 2,407 programmes in 133 countries and territories, providing over 80,000 children and youth with family-based care worldwide. It has been nominated 16 times for the Nobel Peace Prize and is recipient of numerous highly esteemed international awards (see 5.2.4 below). In 2011, total income was €886.8 million (see 5.2.1). Sedmak's research underpinned the design and implementation initially of a pilot project to improve quality of foster care in SOS Children's Villages in Namibia and Nicaragua. Specifically, the research applied Sedmak's own reworkings of the `capability approach' (discussed below) to children aged 8-13 and youths aged 14-18 who have lost parental care or are at risk of losing it. The beneficiaries of Sedmak's research are the NGO and also foster children and their families. The final report, published in February 2012, identified major challenges and opportunities for programme planning and evaluation. It also developed a theoretical framework based on primary data for subsequent application across the SOS Children's Villages globally.
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.
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.
The findings from this research on noticing and helping neglected children are contributing to shaping effective responses by practitioners. In high income countries neglect is the most frequent category of child maltreatment. In the UK as many as one in ten children may experience neglect and yet systems here, and other jurisdictions with similar models, struggle to provide an effective response. The research at Stirling is improving practitioner knowledge and confidence with the development of comprehensive training materials and follow-on knowledge exchange work with multi-disciplinary groups of practitioners in England. It has contributed to policy development in England and Scotland.
Rapid response reports, commissioned from the IOE's Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) by the Departments for Education and Health specifically to inform policy-making, have helped to determine the financial and practical support for disadvantaged families and children in England for more than a decade. This important series of reports has achieved impact not only by producing robust findings that government departments can rely on but by building relationships of trust and mutual understanding between national policy-makers and researchers.
Inter-professional collaboration to prevent social exclusion of children and young people is an emergent work practice, reflecting major changes in welfare policy in the UK and beyond. Research conducted at Oxford since 2005 on these systemic changes, and the new demands they have made on practitioners and services, has contributed to the reconfiguration of children's services locally and nationally, and to the analysis and planning of services beyond the UK. Knowledge exchange is built into the studies to produce immediate and long-term impact on practices and policies, and findings have been integrated into commissioned reports, teaching materials for service leaders, and practitioner and policy summaries.
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.