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There are over two million lone-parent families in the UK, including one in three children. Since the late 1990s, the key policy targets have included raising employment rates and reducing in-work poverty. Researchers at the University of Bath have engaged in innovative and influential research on lone parenthood over many years. Our work has been instrumental in the development and evaluation of policies intended to help lone parents move into, and remain in, work. Specifically, our research has influenced the design and delivery of the New Deal for Lone Parents, Tax Credits, and policies to improve lone parent job retention. These policies have a direct and ongoing impact on the social and economic circumstances, and quality of life, of the families.
Research by Professor Ian Cunningham and Professor Dennis Nickson has influenced policy and practice with regard to a range of employment relations issues in the voluntary sector. Sector-level lead bodies, such as the Coalition of Care and Support Providers Scotland (CCPS) and individual trade unions (e.g. Unison and UNITE) and union confederations such as the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) have adopted the research results and recommendations to campaign and influence public policy. The research has enabled Unison to establish a separate 'service group' (a term used to describe the union's key industrial sector). Research work on re-tendering in the voluntary social care sector (VSSC) has also been a key influence for the Scottish Government according to the Director of the CCPS, resulting in the formulation of specific guidance on social care procurement. Some research findings are cited in an influential report that has resulted in the establishment of a Scottish Government National Steering Group on joint strategic commissioning. The research on the impact of recession on VSSC has also led to joint lobbying between the STUC and employer organisations to campaign on worker terms and conditions, and training.
Every year many thousands of people make claims for damages following an accident, with the Department for Work and Pensions Compensation Recovery Unit recording just over 1 million in 2011-12. Cardiff researchers developed an improved method of calculating compensation involving future loss of earnings and in doing so demonstrated that claimants had previously been undercompensated. The new approach achieves greater consistency, accuracy and equity in awards and, as of the Sixth Edition, has been incorporated into the Government Actuary Department's Actuarial Tables for Personal Injury and Fatal Accident Cases (the `Ogden Tables'). In England and Wales, these tables are used by lawyers and the courts as a starting point in the determination of compensation awards for all future losses and expenditure in cases of personal injury. They also provide guidance in other jurisdictions where the law is based on English common law (former colonies) and which rely upon scheduled damages. Dr Victoria Wass of Cardiff Business School (CBS) was central to the research and to the subsequent training of legal practitioners in the application of the new methodology.
Funded by JRF and ESRC, a long-term series of qualitative studies with residents of very deprived neighbourhoods in Teesside has reached important conclusions about the realities of worklessness and poverty. Many of these run counter to prevailing thinking amongst politicians, policy makers and practitioners. Thus, the research has been used to influence the thinking and the practices of organisations (nationally and regionally) that seek to tackle problems of poverty and worklessness. The research has informed political debate in the UK and EU and has been used nationally and regionally to improve the way that problems of worklessness, poverty and `the low-pay cycle' are understood and responded to. Impact has come about as a consequence of the academic profile and reputation of the underpinning research and a subsequent planned and concerted set of dissemination, public engagement and knowledge exchange activities.
Sandy Hobbs and Jim McKechnie have been researching the issue of young people's (i.e. under 16 years of age) involvement in employment: this is usually termed child labour or child employment. The goal of this research was to establish an evidence base regarding the nature and extent of child employment in the UK, and to consider the benefits and costs of this experience for young people. The impact of this research has been to raise the level of awareness of this issue within the UK, providing an evidence base that has been used by NGOs, and evaluating policy and practice for local and national government departments in the UK and the Isle of Man.
Southampton based research on the interactions of a minimum wage policy and tax evasion has had a direct and clearly acknowledged impact on shaping the labour market policies of Hungary and other Southern European countries, while its research on the role of universal versus targeted benefits on employment has had a significant impact on Swedish fiscal policy. Looking at labour market policies in a broader context and from a behavioural economics point of view (e.g. payroll giving), our findings on charitable giving and workers' motivation have also been used by the UK government's Behavioural Insights Team and impacted its recommendations on giving. The same research is currently influencing US policy on the tax treatment of charitable contributions.
Research conducted by economists at Swansea University has revealed deeply entrenched labour market inequalities. This research has directly informed policy and related debates on a broad range of inequalities in Wales and the UK, and skill mismatches in the EU. In particular, this research:
The Visual Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR), which focuses on understanding and removing the barriers that prevent people with visual impairment accessing education, has been particularly effective in: securing legislative change for braille readers (e.g. the braille labelling of medication); influencing policy documents of NGOs involved in supporting people with visual impairment (by providing reliable and up to date statistics on employment, and the factors associated with employment); and influencing the professional training of teachers who support visually impaired pupils (by improving teacher reflection and systematic record keeping).
The impact of the research programme led to advice being provided to inward-investment companies on labour supply; to the re-working of the Northern Ireland Department of Employment and Learning's [DEL] training provision; to participation on the government's Task Force charged with re-integrating the unemployed into the labour force and to formulating the Northern Ireland [NI] response to the UK-wide welfare reform agenda. The research covered company recruitment experiences, spatial behaviour and perceptions of young people and benefit claimants, and the views of Job Centre advisors. It found that targeting jobs to deprived areas did not necessarily bring jobs to residents of these areas, that recruitment experiences were dependent on locational context, that some people are in a low mobility trap, and that advisors sometimes find it difficult to assimilate rapidly changing policies.
Essex research on false self-employment in the construction industry has informed the Labour Party's policy on this issue, both in government and opposition. Professor Mark Harvey's 2008 report, The evasion economy, commissioned by the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT), informed the Prosperity and Work section of the second `Warwick Agreement', formed by the TUC and the Labour Government. The Labour Government's budget of 2009 made explicit reference to eradicating false self-employment, which led to the circulation of a consultation document that cited Harvey's report. Whilst in opposition, the Party has taken measures to prevent false self-employment and two members of the Shadow Cabinet have explicitly acknowledged Harvey's research.