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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.
UEL's International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Economy of Childcare (ICMEC) researches service costs and equity risks associated with the marketisation and privatisation of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Its interdisciplinary research, which is frequently cited in national and international policy documents, has contributed to policy debate within the European Union, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and other supra-national bodies, and informed the UK Government's development of ECEC and child poverty policies.
Research at Oxford has played a central role within the recent restructuring of the nursing workforce to improve healthcare quality in a context of growing service demands and tightening resource constraints. Much of this restructuring has been heavily dependent on the use of the Healthcare Assistant (HCA) role, provoking much controversy. Presented as a flexible, low cost resource, these HCA roles are also unregulated and therefore seen as a potential source of patient risk. Oxford researchers have fed into this debate across a number of projects, strengthening the evidence base on the nature and consequences of the HCA role. Examining the role from the perspective of different stakeholders, these projects have impacted on national, regional and local policy and practice centred on the management and use of HCAs. In so doing, the research has contributed to the development of a more productive and safer nursing workforce.
The impact arises from high quality analysis and evaluation of governance practices — ]especially those linked to diplomacy at the national, European and international levels. It centres on research carried out by Professor Brian Hocking at Loughborough University between 2005 and 2013, which has produced important studies of change and innovation in diplomatic process. These projects have involved close contact with diplomats and other government/EU officials, as well as dissemination to civil society organisations and students in a variety of contexts, and they have been influential in shaping debates about the future of diplomacy and training of diplomats in the EU, Australia and Canada particularly.
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 Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) has undertaken research providing a sustained contribution to understanding beneficiary-focused EU and UK rural development (RD) policies. This used novel, context-sensitive and mixed-method evaluation techniques to capture complex, systemic impacts and diagnose causal linkages between design and delivery, and policy performance. In so doing it has generated direct impacts in improved RD policy making and evaluation. The research has influenced restructuring in EU policy frameworks for RD and changed England's upland policy. By increasing policymakers' understanding of farm-level behaviours and responses to agri-environmental policy goals, CCRI's research has stimulated better-communicated and integrated advisory approaches.
Criminology research by SQUIRES has changed national and European policy, practice and debate on public safety. Evidence based on the research submitted to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee influenced directly legal changes, policy guidance and policing innovations tackling gun crime and developing more effective firearms controls. For 20 years, SQUIRES' research has engaged directly with the community and inter-agency agendas in policing, firearms control and public safety, demonstrating that improvements in accountability, research evidence and effective evaluation are critical issues for gun control and (CCTV) surveillance policy. SQUIRES is a leading public academic in the field so that research, public and political engagement and impact are mutually reinforcing. The research comprises on-going critical involvement with public debate and policymaking including SQUIRES' appointment to the Association of Chief Police Officers National Advisory Committee on Criminal Use of Firearms. SQUIRES also contributed directly to the European Charter on CCTV surveillance, adopted by the EU in 2010.
In the last decade, sport has earned unprecedented recognition in international policy circles as a tool to support international development. Nonetheless, many have challenged this `new social movement' (Kidd, 2008), concerned by its uncritical application of Global North models of sport to Global South contexts. Addressing these concerns, Brunel researchers and collaborators have drawn on the field of international development studies to investigate how principles of local ownership and partnership can be applied to sport. Since 2010, empirical studies and critical conceptual analyses have contributed to this. Specifically through building organisational capacity at local level, supporting partnership between funders and recipient organisations, and developing national as well as international policy guidance to ensure community level experiences and perspectives are represented in sport for development policy and strategies.
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.
The University of Aberdeen's Business School has built a strong programme of research focussing on managing strategic change, particularly in the healthcare sector. Using a conceptual framework which explores the complex interplay between organisational context, content and process, the University has completed a number of studies looking into patient safety, quality and service redesign, four of which are described here. Because the work routinely involves health care stakeholders across the research pipeline, from articulation of the research problem, through to recommendations and the delivery of solutions, impact is wide-ranging, including changes in staff behaviours, improvements to safety, and significant financial savings.