World Happiness: how are children and young people?
Katherine Roycroft
The World Happiness Report 2024 has found that life satisfaction gradually drops from childhood through adolescence into adulthood. In this blogpost, Professor Gary Pollock discusses his research into child wellbeing, and the policy interventions required to improve it.
The World Happiness Report 2024 is the first in its series to include a substantial chapter about child and adolescent wellbeing.
This evidence based report emphasises the importance of high quality data in helping us to understand what the experiences are and how policy interventions can make improvements. Of particular interest is the international dimension which inevitably result in country comparisons and questions about why it is that children are happier in one country compared to another.
One of the key findings is that life satisfaction gradually drops from childhood through adolescence into adulthood, but that this is not uniformly experienced across the world. Why is this? The results are not entirely clear but there are country, gender, and regional differences that suggest that policy responses should have a role in improving levels of life satisfaction.
The report also identifies data gaps – areas where there is a need for data to improve our understanding of child wellbeing. A key message here is that there is indeed a significant gap: currently there is not an international harmonised longitudinal survey of child wellbeing. This is an important lack because wellbeing is not static and knowing about wellbeing at one point in time is useful but does not help us work out what factors might help to make improvements. That life satisfaction appears to reduce with age, means that longitudinal data is best placed to help us to understand why and therefore develop ideas as to how we can change things.
Addressing the longitudinal data gap
This is something that we have been working on for some years through a series of EU funded projects in the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU). The European Commission, back in 2013 asked if it was desirable and feasible to have a comparative longitudinal study of child wellbeing. The MYWEB project answered in the affirmative on both counts. This was the start of what is now known as Growing Up in Digital Europe, or GUIDE for short. GUIDE will, from 2027 onwards provide harmonised data on a cohort of European 8 year old children and will follow them until they are aged 24. Never before has there been a survey such as this and it will doubtless feature in future international analyses of child wellbeing.
We are really pleased that the World Happiness Report has mentioned GUIDE and pointed to its future importance in the data landscape. Similarly the OECD has recently suggested that the GUIDE study has the potential to make a significant contribution to child wellbeing policy making.
What will GUIDE help us understand?
GUIDE has a focus on the policy relevance of existing and emerging research questions in a variety of fields including health, education/pedagogy, child development, family studies, parenting, transition from school to work, family formation and fertility, demography, culture, leisure, digital society. In particular the data will be used to address:
- Subjective wellbeing, mental health and psychological wellbeing
- Parental support, parenting strategies parental stress and childcare
- School experiences, aspirations, learning difficulties, bullying
- Cognitive, social and emotional development
- Activities, play, use of electronic devices, parental restrictions
- Social and environmental influences on child wellbeing
- Housing and neighbourhood conditions and services
- Child safety and perceptions of rights
- Family and household structure, conditions of child upbringing
- Family health and nutrition and lifestyle
- Social and demographic inequalities and diversity of experiences
What has GUIDE done so far?
GUIDE is at a crucial stage in its development with a planned first wave of data collection in 2027. In 2021 GUIDE was included on the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures Roadmap. This places GUIDE alongside other scientific infrastructures such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In 2023 we successfully piloted the GUIDE questionnaires in Croatia, Finland, France, Ireland, and Slovenia as part of project COORDINATE. An Italian pilot will take place in 2024, and we hope a UK one will follow. The first GUIDE conference took place in 2023 at Innocenti in Florence, where the UNICEF research office is based. UNICEF have been closely involved with the development of GUIDE since the days of the MYWEB project and have consistently asserted the value of our work.
GUIDE’s scientific partners across Europe are working hard to achieve the national funding necessary to collect data in their countries. We hope that the growing recognition of the importance of harmonised longitudinal data focussing on child wellbeing by OECD, UNICEF and the World Happiness Report will help funders and policy makers in continuing to invest in GUIDE.
Professor Gary Pollock is a Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the Policy Evaluation Research Unit (PERU). He is an expert in young people’s political and civic engagement, employment trajectories and social mobility.
We demand good work for all women!: Uncertain Futures exhibition launch
Katherine Roycroft
On the eve of International Women’s Day 2024, the final iteration of the Uncertain Futures art exhibition, ‘Stories of Women, Work and Uncertain Futures’, was launched at Manchester Art Gallery to over 100 guests, including project participants, academics, and policymakers.
Led by Dr Sarah Campbell (Manchester Met), Dr Elaine Dewhurst (University of Manchester), Ruth Edson (Manchester Art Gallery), and artist Suzanne Lacy, the Uncertain Futures research project highlights the inequalities faced by women over 50 years of age in relation to work, both paid and unpaid. As part of the research, one hundred women from diverse backgrounds in Manchester were interviewed about their experiences of work.
The stories of these women, and the project’s recommendations, are now depicted in films exhibited at Manchester Art Gallery. This includes the immersive piece, ‘Her Uncertain Futures’, by artist Suzanne Lacy and Mark Thomas (Manchester Met; Soup Collective), in which women movingly narrate the challenges they have faced in accessing work. A documentary film by Mark Thomas (Manchester Met; Soup Collective) and Ali Asadi, a student at Manchester Met’s School of Digital Arts, shares key research findings from the project.
Across the walls of the gallery space, striking yellow banners capturing the project’s main manifesto demands are also on display. They call for action from both national and local government, including for, ‘an economic contribution for the unpaid labour of women’, and ‘participation in political decision-making on issues affecting women over 50.’ The full Uncertain Futures project manifesto was co-created with the Uncertain Futures Advisory Group – a group of 14 older women in Greater Manchester- and will now form part of the team’s campaign to develop more certain futures for women.
The response to the exhibition has been very encouraging. Cllr Joanne Midgely (Deputy Leader, Manchester City Council (MCC)) remarked at the launch event that the manifesto had great clarity, and that MCC would be working alongside the Uncertain Futures team to incorporate their work into Manchester’s 10-year economic strategy.
Reflecting on the event, Dr Sarah Campbell (Manchester Met) commented:
“Although the final exhibition, it is still the beginning of our campaign to improve the lives of older women around issues relating to both paid and unpaid work.
We hope that we are building a strong alliance that aims to make older women’s working lives more equal, and we are hopeful that this work may go onto make a difference to women in the future.”
You can watch a film of the Uncertain Futures exhibition launch night on MMUTube, and read the full Uncertain Futures manifesto on the MetroPolis website.
To find out more about the Uncertain Futures research project, please contact Dr Sarah Campbell via e-mail.
Strengthening responses to domestic abuse: How health services can help
Katherine Roycroft
The Gender-based Violence (GBV) team (School of Nursing and Public Health, Manchester Met) have produced a series of research reports commissioned by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Office.
In the first of a series of blogposts, they outline some of the problems identified within physical and mental health services, and their policy recommendations for strengthening responses to domestic abuse within health services.
Warning: this article may contain information that you find distressing
Domestic abuse occurs to approximately 1 in 5 people during their lifetime. Most victims of domestic homicide are women, and most perpetrators are men. Around 2 women are killed every week in the UK. Male domestic homicide victims number around 30 deaths per year. Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) have been a statutory requirement in England and Wales since 2011, and document victim and perpetrator contact with services, culminating in recommendations for services that will strengthen responses to domestic abuse which may in turn prevent future deaths. Previous research has identified that little is known about whether these recommendations are implemented. So, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner (DAC) is developing a Domestic Homicide Oversight Mechanism (DHOM) to ensure recommendations are implemented.
Based on our Homicide Abuse Learning Together (HALT) study, the GBV research team were commissioned by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner to analyse service recommendations from DHRs to inform the DHOM. The team’s Health briefing paper outlines the physical and mental health service recommendations of 58 DHRs published 2017-2019.
Key characteristics
Of the 58 DHRs, forty-six of the homicides (79%) were intimate partner homicides (IPH), and 11 (19%) were adult family homicides (AFH). The victims of the homicides were mainly female (84%) and most perpetrators were male (93%). The age range of the victims was from 20 to 85 years, and perpetrators ranged between 21 to 86 years, and these were fairly evenly distributed (between 25 and 55 years old). Most of the victims (75%) and perpetrators (69%) were from a white British background, and 30% of the intimate partners were separated at the time of the homicide.
Levels of service involvement
Within this sample, 88% of victims and 83% of perpetrators were in regular contact with a service. Specifically, 78% of victims and 69% of perpetrators were in regular contact with a GP, and 28% of victims and 45% of perpetrators were being supported in mental health services.
Our analysis showed that medical care was ‘as expected’ (DHR312, p21), but that healthcare professionals (HCPs) did not often question beyond the presenting health issue. Rarely did HCPs look at historical records to find patterns that could indicate a problem beyond the immediate presentation. This lack of professional curiosity and holistic thinking, flagged in 57% of DHR, sometimes existed in the most obvious of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) cases:
The [victim] presented, by appointment, to be reviewed by a facial specialist. In the hospital notes it is recorded “the patient assaulted by partner 12 days ago, multiple blows to the head including being stamped upon”. There was no evidence of any further exploration, onward referral, or professional curiosity. (DHR312, p23)
Repeat non-attendance was also flagged as a possible key indicator of abuse, but this was often seen as frustrating rather than warranting further investigation.
Introducing or reinforcing a way of enquiring about domestic abuse is needed. Currently, clinical enquiry is only specified in policy for Maternity and Adult Mental Health services by the Department of Health (DoH, 2017), but consideration should be given to extending this to GP practices, Accident and Emergency departments and to substance use services. However, instituting clinical enquiry is a complex process and not solely dependent on HCPs asking patients about DVA. Successful enquiry relies on processes and guidelines being clear, concise, and consistent; appropriate referral pathways; time and space to attend sensitively to patients and leadership that prioritises DVA.
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion
Three key issues were highlighted regarding ethnicity in the DHRs within this sample. Firstly, a lack of understanding of issues faced by minoritised women, including forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Hence, Integrated Care boards should ensure that domestic abuse training encompasses diverse forms of abuse. Secondly, insecure immigration status, particularly those subject to No Recourse to Public funds and its impact on accessing healthcare is also an area of concern. Thirdly, there were several examples where interpreters were not used at all, or inappropriate interpreters were used, such as children, and in at least one case, the perpetrator. We recommend that ethnicity, immigration issues, cultural contexts and language need to be identified early on in a patient’s contact with health services so that an appropriate response is offered.
Despite the obviously gendered nature of domestic homicide, very few of the DHRs discuss gender. There are limited or no female only spaces within services, contributing to a lack of take-up of support:
[The victim] was very concerned about being with men on the detox programme provided by [name of substance use service]. Her reasons were not recorded but may have been linked to concerns about her safety. Many women with substance misuse issues prefer women only provision but no such women only residential drug/alcohol services are available in [name of city]. (DHR236, p147).
Within this sample, 21% of the perpetrators were accessing substance use services, but so were 14% of victims. There is definitely scope to ensure that these mainly male-designed services are modified and adapted to provide a more gender-sensitive modality.
What’s working well
47% of the DHRs included examples of good practice and these mostly focused on timely communication and/or safe methods of communication being established, the effective sharing of information between agencies, the effective identification of risks and steps being taken to mitigate those risks:
…The [mental health] team used various forms of communication pathways to engage with her [victim]. [service] continued to offer appointments despite [victim’s] disengagement. (DHR174, p32)
Our policy recommendations
The research found there were huge variations in response to people experiencing or perpetrating domestic abuse. We recognise that services are currently stretched to breaking point, however the lessons learned from this study need to be heeded to strengthen responses to domestic abuse in health settings. Key policy and practice recommendations include:
- Introducing clinical enquiry in health settings particularly in GP practices, mental health and substance use services.
- Improving domestic abuse risk assessments.
- Co-ordinated care, better multi-agency working and improved record-keeping.
- Appropriate referral pathways where disclosures are made or where the nature of the presenting issue is clearly domestic abuse.
- Extending the use of IRIS.
- Domestic abuse training to ensure staff are equipped with the knowledge and skills to identify and respond to domestic abuse and to consider specialist staff e.g. Independent Domestic Abuse Advocates in hospital settings.
- Senior leadership commitment to address and support changes required regarding identification and response to domestic abuse.
The DAC office will use our research and recommendations to inform the DHOM and we look forward to seeing how NHS England, Integrated Care boards, GP practices, Care Quality Commission, NHS Trusts, the various Royal Colleges; and medical/health related professional bodies respond.
You can read the full Health briefing paper commissioned by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner here.
The Gender-based Violence (GBV) team members involved in this research are:
Professor Khatidja Chantler is Principal Investigator for HALT, this study and leads the Gender-based Violence Team. Khatidja is a Professor of Gender, Equalities and Communities.
Dr Kim Heyes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Public Health. Kim’s research focuses on societal inequalities and intersections of mental health and abuse.
Dr Vicky Baker is a Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Public Health. Vicky’s research focuses on child to parent abuse.
Dr Clare Gunby is a Senior Lecturer in gender-based violence in the School of Nursing and Public Health. For the last 15 years she has been leading and managing research on sexual and domestic abuse.
Researchers shape new Greater Manchester youth violence prevention strategy
Katherine Roycroft
Researchers from Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Met in partnership with Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) have published a report examining the views and opinions of violence from young people in Greater Manchester.
Working with approximately 70 young people across Greater Manchester, the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies used creative approaches to explore young people’s views of the causes of violence, their feelings of safety and what they think should be done to tackle violence. They made several recommendations for what the VRU could fund to help reduce violence which included young people being listened to, additional resources for young people’s activities, support for families, consistent key workers, and safe spaces.
The report’s findings have helped inform the Greater than Violence strategy, a ten-year violence prevention strategy in the city-region developed by the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester, in collaboration with Greater Manchester VRU, partner agencies, communities, and the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector. The strategy marks a commitment to reducing violence and improving the lives of young people across the region.
Hannah Smithson, Professor of Criminology and Youth Justice at Manchester Met, said, “We were struck by how much young people had to say on the topic of violence. It is an issue that affected their lives, from feelings of safety at school, when using public transport and contact with the police.”
The full report is available here.
To find out more about this research, please contact Professor Hannah Smithson.
You read more about current research projects at Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS) on their website.
UK Resilience Framework: Who gets left behind?
Katherine Roycroft
The UK Government's recently launched UK Resilience Framework encourages everybody to be prepared for disaster. But, Professor Ben Kerrane argues, it ignores structural inequalities, putting society's most vulnerable at risk.
UK Government has recently launched its UK Resilience Framework. The Framework promotes a sense of collective resilience and outlines the unsettled and troubled times that we live in. The war in Ukraine, global pandemics, and evolving cyber challenges are just some of the threats highlighted which have potential to impact our way of life. Built around three core principles (a shared understanding of risk; a greater emphasis on preparation and prevention; and establishing resilience as a “whole of society” endeavour) the Resilience Framework encourages everyone to be prepared.
‘Being prepared’ is the prepper’s mantra. Preppers are individuals who choose to gather items including food, water, and medicines in anticipation of possible disaster and shortages. Our research within the prepping community started with the one-in-five British consumers who chose to ignore Government advice not to stockpile goods in anticipation of post-Brexit shortages. Over time, preppers (in our project, mothers who disproportionately assumed home-based preparedness) stockpiled items which they felt their family would need over a given period (often several months). They learnt new skills (e.g., pickling, canning, and dehydrating), inventoried items and rotated their ‘stash’, and carefully curated meal plans and activities to keep their families fed, watered, and entertained during possible difficulties.
Preppers, then, are arguably already practicing resilience and represent a valuable source of best practice to learn from. However, they are often marginalised and vilified as holding delusional, end-of-the world, apocalyptic views (which many individuals consider farfetched and unnecessary).
But is preparing for disaster so farfetched? As we witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, ordinary, unprepared consumers ravaged supermarkets and quickly stockpiled items (more usually toilet paper, tinned beans, pasta, and other long-life items) to ensure their family did not go without during local and national lockdowns. What resulted was empty supermarket shelves through mass panic-buying which overwhelmed supply-chains, meaning that lots of people went without because of a lack of preparedness.
As we have each lived through such difficult and turbulent times, compounded by rising energy costs and the associated cost-of-living crisis, is it, then, so extraordinary to follow the prepping mantra to ‘be prepared’?
UK Government doesn’t think so. Its new guidance urges households to stockpile items such as radios and candles, and to have ample food and water in case disaster strikes. Although possibly alarming, Governments around the world (including Scotland, New Zealand and the United States) have already called for such individual action and preparedness.
Despite admirable intentions, there are, however, several flaws with the approach the UK Resilience Framework takes:
The ‘haves’ vs ‘have-nots’
Firstly, despite the resilience framework promoting a ‘whole of society’ approach, preparedness inevitably develops into a scenario of haves and have-nots. Preparedness, even if practiced over time (e.g., through exploiting supermarket sales promotions over an extended period), costs (in both a financial, mental-load, and time-based perspective). Our research with (predominantly affluent, middle-class) preppers reveals their relative privilege in society. For example, they have vehicular access to out-of-town supermarkets to exploit sales promotions; have ‘extra’ space to store their amassed goods; have time to learn prepping skills through stable employment, often within dual-income households; and they have the financial means to buy equipment to underpin their prepping efforts (e.g., storage containers; dehydrating machines). As such, considerable social and race-based inequalities underpin the ability, or otherwise, to be prepared (with lots of mothers already struggling to feed their families daily, without ability to look forward to envisaging ‘possibilities’ which may/may not actualise). In short: not everyone can ‘be prepared’.
The stigmatization of the unprepared
Secondly, and linked with the above, in assuming that everyone can prep, those who cannot likely face vilification for failing to act, as encouraged by Government. This ‘choice-based’ approach to prepping is problematic. Our own research highlights a class-based ‘othering’ of the unprepared. Our participants often stigmatized unprepared mothers as “lazy” and “feckless”, yet overlooked their relative (class-based, financial) privilege in being able to gather extra goods. In this scenario, being unprepared could be positioned as a ‘choice’, with those in real need likely facing little sympathy from those with the ability to prep. In sum: the resilience framework has potential to foster societal stigma (overlooking the barriers to practicing resilience).
An inward-looking outcome
Thirdly, our research within the prepping community demonstrates an immediate level of preparedness. The mothers that we spoke with were preparing to feed their own family, and envisaged difficulties in sharing their goods with others beyond their immediate family unit. We are, therefore, cautious of the Resilience Framework’s positioning as a ‘whole-of-society’ approach. Given that prepping envisages considerable labour and resource, we argue that further consideration and prioritisation of those who cannot prep (e.g., the disabled, the vulnerable, the low-income) is needed. In sum: if ‘shit hits the fan’, our research suggests an individual approach to caregiving, which problematises the communal focus of the resilience framework.
Next steps
We have shared our concerns with The Cabinet Office through meetings with the Resilience Directorate, and we are using our research to inform the roll-out of the UK Resilience Framework website (which will offer tangible advice on how to prepare for/act during emergencies). Ultimately, we call for a more sympathetic positioning of the Resilience Framework, which acknowledges the structural and societal inequalities surrounding the ability to be prepared and greater consideration of how the most vulnerable in society will be protected during future disruption.
Want to read more on this subject? Check out Dr Kerrane’s article for The Conversation, ‘UK urged to get ready for disaster with new national crises plan – but our research reveals the dark side of prepping.’
Professor Ben Kerrane is Professor of Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, where he is also Faculty Head of Research Culture. His research has been funded by the ESRC and British Academy/Leverhulme, and focusses on family consumption, consumer resilience and preparedness.
You can contact Professor Kerrane via e-mail, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
Manchester Met researchers inform new Parliamentary inquiry on UK-Rwanda Treaty
Katherine Roycroft
Evidence from Manchester Met Law academics Dr Kay Lalor and Dr Rossella Pulvirenti has been cited in a recent report by the House of Lords International Agreements Committee:, ‘Scrutiny of international agreements: UK– Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership (2023-24).’
The Inquiry, launched in December 2023, considered whether the new treaty on asylum signed between the UK and Rwandan governments address the concerns of the UK’s Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had previously declared the UK Government’s Rwanda scheme unlawful on the grounds that Rwanda was an unsafe country.
In their submission of evidence, Dr Lalor and Dr Pulvirenti argued the new treaty still places the UK in violation of its fundamental international obligations. In support of this, they shared findings from their recent research, including an assessment of the Rwanda scheme’s compliance with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
Their research found that greater consideration in the scheme should be given to the UK’s obligations under the ECHR, particularly with respect to those with protected characteristics, or those who might be deemed vulnerable or a member of a vulnerable group.
For instance, they highlighted the risk of a vulnerable, traumatised person being removed to Rwanda because they do not immediately disclose all aspects of their vulnerability in their screening interview. Working with asylum seeker support organisations, they found that vulnerable individuals will often require a significant period of time to feel comfortable sharing their trauma.
Dr Lalor and Dr Pulvirenti are established experts in asylum policy and law. Their research is cited in multiple reports by the International Agreements Committee on the Rwanda scheme, and their work is also cited in the recent Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. In January 2022, Dr Pulvirenti acted as an Expert Witness for the Women and Equalities (House of Commons) Committee’s Enquiry on Equality and the UK asylum process.
To find out more about this research, please contact Dr Rosella Pulvirenti or Dr Kay Lalor.
You can read Dr Pulvirenti and Dr Lalor’s research report and policy briefing from their most recent research project, ‘Outsourcing Asylum’ on the MetroPolis website.
Bringing paludiculture into policy
Katherine Roycroft
Peatlands are crucial to combating climate change. Natural carbon sinks, they store around one third of the soil-based carbon in the world. Damage to peatlands- through agriculture, for example- poses a significant problem, producing high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. For Britain to achieve Net Zero by 2050, peatlands need to be protected.
In January, MetroPolis facilitated a policy workshop as part of Manchester Met’s OPEN-peat project, which is being led by Dr Chris Field (Science and Engineering) and Lauryn Mcloughlin (Science and Engineering). Funded by Natural England, OPEN-peat builds on Dr Field’s innovative, impactful research into peatland restoration, focusing on engagement and knowledge exchange between farmers, landowners and policy makers.
The workshop explored the specific policy needs, and evidence gaps, in paludiculture. Paludiculture is wetland farming on peat that is environmentally beneficial and retains a productive land use for farmers. A wide range of stakeholders attended the workshop and shared learning, including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ Peat Policy Lead, the National Farmer’s Union (NFU) Policy Lead, the Chair of NW NFU and NFU Crops Board, local farmers, the Environment Agency Peatlands Lead, Director of Land from Peel Group, and SMEs including the CEO and MD of Micropropagation Services Ltd., and the CTO of Ponda.
Key challenges to paludiculture adoption emerged in discussions. This included:
- Tenant farmers are currently unable to adopt paludiculture methods due to rewetting devaluing the land.
- Business cases are needed to engage farmers in paludiculture – these will be produced, for example, in Paludiculture Exploration Fund (PEF) projects.
- There is a need to educate supply chains and end users on the benefits of paludiculture methods including carbon sequestration and sustainable crops.
- More joined-up thinking is required between local, regional and national policy makers including around planning, finance and environmental areas.
In 2025, this workshop will be repeated to address progress on these key issues and identify any new challenges.
Following the workshop, Dr Field reflected:
“It was amazing to bring together so many influential people from across different sectors. The workshop highlighted the challenges the different organisations face and how we need to work together to resolve these and remove barriers to transition drained agricultural peatlands to paludiculture.”
To find out more about this research, please contact Dr Field or Lauryn Mcloughlin
You can read more about Dr Field’s research on peatland restoration here.
Making an impact on the lives of society's most vulnerable
Katherine Roycroft
“Fairness, integrity, diligence, and impartiality…. When I met Michelle at the beginning of her academic career, I saw those qualities shine through, and I continue to see those qualities shine through.”
Dr Matthew Long (Director, National Crime Agency)
On 17th January 2024, Manchester Met’s Professor Michelle McManus (Professor of Safeguarding and Violence Prevention, within the Faculty of Health and Education) delivered her inaugural lecture, ‘Connecting ‘The Matrix’ of Safeguarding: Complexity, Collaboration and Impact’, in Manchester Met’s Brooks Building.
Hosted by Professor Saul Becker (Faculty Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Health and Education), the lecture also featured a moving introduction from Dr Matthew Long (Director, National Crime Agency), a long-time collaborator of Professor McManus.
Exploring Professor McManus’ academic journey, the lecture clearly evidenced the real-world impact her award-winning work has had in protecting the most vulnerable in society.
This is demonstrated, for example, by the Kent Internet Risk Assessment Tool (KIRAT); a tool co-created by Professor McManus. KIRAT is a screening tool designed to assess the risk of contact sex offending in males who access indecent images of children (IIOC) via the internet. Not only was the tool rolled out nationally, informing Home Office policy, but it is now deployed globally. Dr Long- who collaborated with Professor McManus on KIRAT- explained that by creating the tool:
“We protected thousands of children…and we have protected against hundreds and thousands of offences that simply never happened because this tool existed.”
At-risk children will also be safeguarded through Professor McManus’ recent, high-profile work leading a national thematic analysis of Child Practice Reviews in Wales. This review was commissioned by the National Independent Safeguarding Board (NISB) Wales, to help understand the complexities surrounding multi-agency safeguarding and the challenges in achieving a collective safeguarding responsibility.
The resulting report by Professor McManus and her team made actionable recommendations to support practitioners, leaders, and policymakers to improve collective safeguarding. Additionally, it led to new, practical tools to improve safeguarding effectiveness. This included, ‘The Collective Safeguarding Responsibility Model: The 12C’s’, a model outlining the essential features for achieving collective safeguarding responsibility.
Importantly, these outputs have been included in the work-plan for the NISB going forwards in fulfilling their strategic duties under the Social Services and Well-being Act.
Making improvements together
In her inaugural lecture, Professor McManus emphasised how teamwork has been key throughout her academic career.
Professor McManus’ skill at collaboration has meant her research has successfully informed policy and practice in a vast range of organisations, including HMI Inspectorate of Probation, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, the Parliament of Australia, and the Norwegian Government. Testimonies from past collaborators played during the lecture, including from Tony Young (Chair, National Independent Safeguarding Board Wales) and Ian Critchley QPM (Lead for Child Protection, Abuse and Investigation, National Police Chiefs’ Council) demonstrates how valued she is as a colleague.
Looking to her future at Manchester Met, Professor McManus highlighted her focus on building new partnerships, submitting new bids and research papers, and helping to develop and launch Manchester Met’s forthcoming Institute for Children’s Future’s. As with her previous work, all this activity will have the ultimate goal of providing ways to better identify and protect our most vulnerable.
Reflecting on the occasion of the inaugural lecture, Professor McManus commented:
“The inaugural lecture was an evening I will never forget. I am not sure I have ever been in front of a room with so many people that I love and are inspired by. I was joined by my family, friends, colleagues (previous and current), along with leaders inside and outside the university. It was such a unique experience to provide some of my personal journey into academia, as it wasn’t exactly a straight journey! But also to take a moment to consider the work that I had done and appreciate some of the huge impacts it has had on protecting people and to really feel proud of that work. We don’t often take the time to reflect and see the journey.”
Please click the image below to download Professor McManus’ full Inaugural Lecture Powerpoint presentation:
A big political year: How academic experts can play a part in 2024 policy debates
Katherine Roycroft
The new year brings new challenges for policymakers. In our latest blogpost, Mark Fuller (Director of Showrunner Communications) explores how academics can cut through the noise and provide expert input into political debate.
The year is only a few weeks old but the political heat is already rising at Westminster despite the January chill. Claims and counter claims about the Government’s record and Parliamentary tussles over immigration policy are in full effect, kicking off what is likely to be a long run-in to the general election. Although the likelihood of a spring ballot remains on the table, most Westminster-watchers are predicting that we will go to the polls in November. Whilst the polls currently have the Conservatives looking likely to lose the election and make way for a Labour Government , there is still a long way to go.
This means many more months of debate and commentary about the issues that the public want to see tackled by the next Government, with the economy, the NHS, housing and immigration highest up the agenda. Much of this space will be filled by the politicians themselves as well as their outliers – the ideologically-aligned journalists, think tankers and the like that regularly appear on the broadcast news and write opinion pieces for the press. However, there will also be plenty of scope for academics to help shed light on the often complex issues up for discussion. As other posts in this blog and the wider work of MetroPolis shows, Manchester Metropolitan is not short of researchers primed and ready to play their part. Examples like Dr Katy Jones’ work on employability and research on high streets from both the Institute of Place Management and Dr Lucy Montague are just a couple of illustrations of the wealth of expertise this university has to offer on a wide range of policy challenges.
Cutting through the noise will be difficult this year, but those that manage to do so could help shape the direction of future policy. In a very immediate sense they could influence the terms of debate that play out in the election year, while building a profile and relationships that could ensure impact longer into the future.
So with that opportunity in mind, here are a few simple tips for academics looking to engage this year.
- Remember the value of specialist subject-matter expertise.
Debate is already well covered by generalists able to put forward politically-aligned perspectives on a whole range of issues, with regular faces cropping up on the media based on their right or left of centre leanings. The public space is also well-populated by political analysts ready to assess which party is up, which is down and what all means for the outcome of the election. Because of this it will be tough for new voices to cut through unless they offer something substantially different. A depth of genuine expertise in the policy issues driving public concern could well be this quality.
Academics that have devoted years of their working lives to research an issue have a depth of understanding that is hard to find elsewhere. Whether it be healthcare systems, geopolitics, regional economic growth, environmental sustainability or much else besides, the expertise that academics can provide will be invaluable during the coming period of concentrated policy debate. There are a host of ways in which this value could be unlocked. For some it might mean working with the University’s press office to place commentary in the media. For others it could mean providing briefings to Parliamentary candidates about constituency dynamics. Or it might mean joining up with national campaign groups to help put particular issues onto the agenda. In all cases though, the unique offer that academics make is a level of subject-matter expertise that can’t be found elsewhere.
- Inject evidence into the debate.
While expertise is powerful, it is made doubly so when backed by robust evidence. Data that sets out the scale of a policy challenge, modelling that suggests the efficacy of proposed solutions, or case studies that bring the issue to life are examples of the kind of material that could have an impact. Academics doubt have banks of evidence related to their fields of study that could be packaged up and applied to policy debates.
It’s worth remembering that the policy world is different from the scholarly one, so this does not (necessarily) mean that the form in which this evidence is presented needs to follow the usual path. For example, it could be that a dataset from one research project can be combined with one from other projects and packaged up into a new briefing note or bank of infographics for use on social media. Another option could be to summarise the methodology and results of a research project on a think tank panel. The common thread is however that when academics put forward arguments about policy, they do so backed by the robust evidence that others are unable to call on.
- Speak the language of politics and policy
None of the above should be particularly out of the ordinary for academics – displaying genuine expertise based on rigorously researched evidence is as important for academic credibility as it is for policy impact – so the biggest adaptation needed might be to the way in which contributions are framed. Academic input to the election debate has to relate to the policy issues – and public concerns driving them – in play. For example, expert views and evidence on demographic trends should be put in relation to proposals on immigration; analysis of developments in AI should speak to ideas around tech regulation; and insight into innovations in healthcare should acknowledge NHS waiting lists. And in all cases, questions over money should be considered – with all policy proposals subject to debate on how much they cost and where the money comes from.
This does not necessarily mean that academics should pass judgement on the policies being put forward by politicians, or seek to propose fully developed policies of their own, but they do need to signal the policy relevance of their work for it to have an impact.
Whatever the date of this year’s election we should be set for weeks and months of debate playing out over the airwaves, in the press, online and on people’s doorsteps. The country faces a daunting array of challenges and the public want to see that the people asking for their votes are ready to tackle them. There’s going to be a lot of noise and nonsense to cut through but we all stand to gain if academic input informs the debate and helps shape the policy programme that follows.
Are you a Manchester Met researcher beginning to think about the policy impact of your research? Or maybe you’re experienced in policy engagement, but struggling to reach key stakeholders? Then why not take advantage of MetroPolis’ free 1-1 policy coaching service with Showrunner Communications?
Get in touch with the MetroPolis team via mcrmetropolis@mmu.ac.uk. We’ll then send you a short Expression of Interest form, and help arrange your coaching session with an expert.
Transforming environmental politics through ‘radical kindness’
Katherine Roycroft
With the Fridays for Future climate strikes and Extinction Rebellion protests, young people are spearheading calls for action on the climate crisis.
And researchers have found that as these movements have developed, so too have new approaches to environmental politics.
A new chapter in ‘Youth Knowledge’, a book published by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, explores ‘radical kindness’, an ethics of intersectional justice, solidarity and care exhibited by young climate activists. This approach calls for positive, transformational – rather than incremental- change, and utilises networks of aid, including for mental healthcare.
Commissioned by Partnership for Youth, the chapter is the product of an innovative collaboration between Manchester Met’s Dr Benjamin Bowman (Arts and Humanities), Sarah Pickard (Sorbonne Nouvelle University) and young climate activists Pooja Kishinani and Marion Smith. Importantly, these young researchers were paid, trained, and supported by Manchester Met’s Manchester Centre for Youth Studies.
The co-production of the chapter has been invaluable for the young researchers, commented Pooja Kishinani:
“Young people are at the frontlines of the climate movement, working towards building just futures. Yet collaborative enquiry with young people as co-researchers is an essential element that’s often missing in projects that focus on youth political engagement.
Working on this timely chapter with two academics and a fellow young researcher was truly a transformative experience. It was a journey of learning-from and learning-with each other, navigating differences in perspectives, and approaching research questions with a richness of experience. Such collaborative projects that centre and amplify the voices of young people (and other folks who have traditionally been excluded from policy-making processes) will be inevitable to co-imagine and co-create pathways that address the polycrises without reproducing unjust structures.”
This is not the only research collaboration between Dr Bowman and young climate activists. In addition to this chapter, Dr Bowman’s research with young people on climate change includes an award-winning essay for The Climate Connection (British Council), the Young Climate Imaginaries reading groups for climate education which forms part of a book of teaching tools on climate justice published by University of California Press, one of the world’s first empirical studies of the climate strike movement, as well as several academic publications.
Dr Bowman notes that institutional support for this work has been key:
“Our research on young people’s responses to climate change was kickstarted by Research Accelerator Grant funding from MMU’s Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences, and it was hosted and supported by the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies. This research would not have been possible without MMU and MCYS’s sense of adventure when it comes to new opportunities for youth-centred research. In this case, we paid young people a good wage as research assistants. It has been so important to have the support of the University to recognize young people’s work, pay them, share in their knowledge and write alongside them.”
On the outcomes of the collaboration, he continues:
“I am thankful for the effort, knowledge and sense of adventure that our young co-authors brought to the project, and I am grateful and excited in equal measure to publish as one of the authors in this exceptional and inspiring team.”
The full ‘Youth Knowledge’ publication, including, ‘“Radical kindness”: the young climate activists transforming democracy’, is available to download here.
To find out more about this research, please contact Dr Benjamin Bowman via e-mail or on Twitter.
You can find out more about Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS) on their website.