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This case study draws on work undertaken by the Centre for Social Action (CSA) to improve publicly funded services through service-user engagement in both research processes and service delivery. The centre combines applied social research with service and policy evaluation, consultancy, training and information services to the fields of youth work, community development and social and health care. The social action methodology for practice and research undertaken using this participatory approach has had an impact on services and policy internationally (e.g. classroom teaching in the US and the development of social work services in Eastern Europe), nationally (e.g. evaluations of national youth participation projects such as Participation Works and U R Boss for the Howard League) and locally (e.g. work with Leicester City Council). Impacts have been wide ranging, and include methodological innovation, development of training curricula and materials for practitioners, and policy changes which have a profound impact on people's lives.
Advanced practice roles in nursing (APN roles) have been developed widely across a range of healthcare settings and organisational boundaries in response to government policy directives. A programme of research has been undertaken to generate robust evidence of the contribution of APN roles to healthcare. Research outputs include a theoretical framework to evaluate the impact of these roles. This framework has been used to underpin the development of a practical toolkit to assist practitioners to demonstrate their impact on patients, staff and the organisations in which they work. Beneficiaries include policymakers, professional organisations and NHS providers and individual practitioners.
By means of the insights generated from this project, organizational consultants, management coaches, supervisors, practitioners, practice educators and students have been enabled to consider the underpinning theory and application of relational and reflective supervision as means of achieving relational and reflective social work practice. A greater appreciation of the context, significance and use of relationship based, reflective approaches has the potential to encourage application and improve the education, management and practice of social work with children and their families. Outputs have been the first to make the theoretical links between the new profession of management coaching and the supervision and practice of social work.
This case study outlines the impact of Professor McNiff's career-long research programme aimed at supporting practitioners' action enquiries for social transformation, and finding ways collaboratively to:
The research has been undertaken internationally across multiple settings and sectors, and supported through the production of associated resources. The collective accounts constitute a global knowledge base that links impact and validity through critical self-enquiry.
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.
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.
Since the Bradford Riots in 2001, research at Bradford has helped to defuse underlying tensions between deprived, multiethnic communities and between them and the local state thus strengthening community resilience in the city. Building on global research, particularly in Latin America, we have introduced participatory and peace-building methodologies into the locality, but with implications beyond it. The Programme for a Peaceful City enhances our impact through academic-practitioner reflection spaces. Our research with rather than on communities fosters their voice in policy, contributing to a non-confrontational response to the EDL in 2010, 2012 and 2013 and bringing community activists from Bradford's diverse communities together to co-create the ESRC-funded Community University (Comm-Uni-ty) in May 2013.
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.
This case study focuses on the impact of research undertaken within the European Research Centre (ERC) and the Centre for the Study of International Governance at Loughborough University between 1993 and 2009, primarily by Professor Linda Hantrais (1993-2008 and now Emeritus). The impact of the research has been created through high quality cross-national socio-demographic analysis which has underpinned policy formation and delivery at the European and national levels, with particular reference to social policy, citizenship and family policy. It has had a substantial further impact by generating advances in international comparative research methods and training.