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Changes to the law in the early 1990s removed the need for corroborating or physical evidence in abuse cases and allowed videotaped evidence of a child or other vulnerable witnesses to be used in a criminal court. This necessitated the drawing up of guidance to help police officers and other judicial practitioners, gather crucial evidence while minimising unintentional influence. Research at Leicester has underpinned work to assess and improve the effectiveness of this guidance and to create a framework of procedural best practice. This has influenced and directed the formation of protocols and training development of practitioners for uniform, fair and reliable investigative interviewing of vulnerable witnesses and for accurate identification and interrogative interviewing of suspects in the UK and through the sharing of best practice, across the UK and internationally.
In the mid-2000s the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) devised a new measure to compare area variations in reconviction rates across the Probation Service in England and Wales so that these differences could be taken into account when allocating resources. A number of Probation Trust Chief Executives have used Hedderman's research successfully to argue for revisions to the reconviction 'performance measure'. Her findings also influenced the Justice Select Committee's recommendation that the original measure should be replaced, as she showed that it led to unfair comparisons, was easy to manipulate, and failed to provide information which could be used by areas to improve their impact on reoffending. She has since worked directly with Kent, London and Hertfordshire Probation Trusts to address this last point.
Prior to the E.G. West Centre's research, low-cost private schools were not on any agency's radar as having a positive contribution to make to "education for all"; our work changed that position dramatically. In terms of significance, since 2008 the research has led to changing awareness, attitudes and policies embracing a positive development role for low-cost private schools from international agencies such as DFID (Department for International Development) and national governments. Philanthropists and investors have also been inspired by the research to bring funding and expertise to improve opportunities for children in these schools. The reach of the research has extended to 20 countries in five continents, including Burkina Faso, China, Dominican Republic, Ghana, India, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and South Sudan.
Fieldwork commissioned by Cadbury/Kraft, undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM), and carried out in Ghana, the Dominican Republic and India (2006-11), considers whether small scale farmers and workers have the social and economic capacity to sustain and expand their output of quality cocoa. The research has been instrumental in shifting the strategies of Cadbury and other major chocolate producers towards the sourcing of Fairtrade cocoa. Specific impacts include: the launch of the £45m Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (CCP); Cadbury/Kraft converting its main product lines to certified Fairtrade; and the launch of the (US$400m) `Cocoa Life' programme by Mondelēz/Kraft, building on the success of CCP. Spill-over impacts are also evident: both Nestlé and Mars have adopted similar partnership strategies, and a subsequent increase in exposure has seen Fairtrade chocolate sales rise twelvefold over a four year period.
Bradford research led to the development of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) model which fed into the formulation of international policy tools: namely the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI) and the Indicators for Measuring and Maximizing Economic Value Added and Job Creation from Private Investment in Specific Value Chains (IMMEV). PRAI was adopted by the Group of 20 (G20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in 2010 and is currently in use to determine relevant national policies aiming to attract investment in agriculture, in Africa and South East Asia. IMMEV is used to support the Development Pillar of G20 and its use is currently implemented in six countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Laos, Mongolia and Mozambique).