Professor Jonathan Grix on the hard thinking needed by sports policy makers during the global lockdown

One of the key roles of sport in society has always been as a major source of distraction from politics and everyday life. During antiquity, the Romans understood this better than most, offering spectacular entertainment to their citizens in the Colosseum as a way of diverting interest away from wars and political infighting. Nowadays, sport continues to provide the public with ‘diversion’ and ‘entertainment’ and a conduit through which individuals vent their frustrations, channel their exaltation and return home happier with their lot post-event.

Herein lies the problem during the unprecedented shut-down caused by the Covid-19 virus: sport is best placed to help during a crisis where people yearn to be entertained, yet, the nature of the coronavirus, has led to the cancellation of one of the most powerful cultural forces needed to see many people through the coming months of isolation.

All major sporting events have either been cancelled or postponed, such as the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the Euro 2020 football championship and the French Open tennis championship, or are under immense pressure to follow suit. Wimbledon will succumb to external pressure and postpone in due course. Both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japan were reluctant to pull the plug, primarily because whoever postponed the event would likely be responsible for paying the bill, which is why the decision took longer than expected to be announced and was ultimately a joint one.

The economic and psychological impact arising from the cancellation and postponement of sport and sports events are probably the most important factors to consider. The sports industry is one of the fastest growing globally and comprises not only major events and league games, but also sponsorship, the sale of merchandise, TV rights, ticketing, betting and spectators (arm-chair and live). All of the above – plus the supply chains that are linked to them – have ground to a halt, which may well push many clubs and sports to the financial brink. For most people, however, the cessation of their weekly dose of sport will impact them personally. Bombastic events, such as the Olympics, will be missed, but it will be the daily and weekly fix, rather than one-off events, that will take the greatest toll. One of society’s biggest pastimes – apart from Netflix, soaps, social media and actually playing sport – is watching or following sport, sports teams and sports stars. Many peoples’ lives are built around weekend sports matches – the build up to the game in the week before, pre-meetings on match day with other fans, the match itself and then the post-event analysis that itself takes a few days, before the cycle begins again.

Many people see sport as a trivial side-bar to human life, which is true when held up against war and poverty. However, in the unprecedented situation of self-isolation and social distancing brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, the loss of sport could add to a decline in the mental health of many fans. Far from trivial, therefore, a more serious side to sport for mass entertainment becomes apparent under such conditions. In these unprecedented circumstances perhaps there is a need to think outside of the box. One area which would lend itself to a ‘lockdown’ is the meshing of Esports and ‘real’ sport: that is, where athletes ‘compete’ virtually, a practice already widespread. For example, cyclists can be linked through technology in real-time and ‘compete’ against rivals in virtual races. While this is not the Tour de France, it offers an element of entertainment that can be viewed safely from behind a computer screen with both shots of the athletes, as well as of their comparative progress in the ‘race’. Recent running events have attempted something similar, whereby instead of running a half-marathon together, individuals run alone for the specified distance using GPS in their locality and then upload their times to see where they finished in the race. More dramatic ideas include taking athletes who are virus free, quarantining them and then having them play matches, run races and compete viewed by an audience thirsty for sport and the uncertainty of outcome that makes its consumption so exciting. National Governing Bodies of sport, such as British Cycling, already use static bikes for race preparation. Given the collapse of the sporting calendar, the Government’s elite funding body, UK Sport, ought to tap into those athletes no longer Tokyo bound to organise virtual competitions (working with broadcasters) along the lines discussed above, that could go some way in satisfying the public demand for sports consumption and offering a channel for highly trained athletes to compete.

In this way, sport and sporting competition are not simply trivial pursuits, but rather they become an essential outlet in the pressure-valve of self-isolation, lock-down and social distancing of the weeks and months ahead.

Jonathan Grix is Professor of Sports Policy at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Charlotte Bagnall asks what impact a prolonged school closure due to the pandemic might have on children transitioning from primary to secondary school?

The transition from primary to secondary school is a major life event for eleven-year-old children in the UK, and one of the most difficult transitions faced within education.  During this time, children face simultaneous psychosocial, environmental and academic discontinuity, alongside negotiating the onset of puberty and national Standard Assessment Tests (SATs).

Primary-secondary school transition is repeatedly outlined in DfE government reports as a period ‘not handled well’ (Ofsted, 2015, March, p. 65) where the quality of transition between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 is ‘much too variable’ (Ofsted, 2015, September, p. 21) and arrangements for transfer as a result ‘weak in over a quarter of the schools visited’ (Ofsted, 2014, p. 21). This is despite students’ needs to access timely and sensitive emotional centred support in the lead up to and over this period.

More recently, following the international outbreak of Covid-19, which has resulted in the abrupt closure of schools for at least the next few months, Year 6 pupils face additional uncertainty. This means cancelled school trips, leaving assemblies not taking place, missed opportunities to say goodbye to teachers and classmates, and pupils not taking SATs, which all involved have worked tirelessly for. Transition preparations, including visits to prospective secondary schools and much needed classroom discussions, may also no longer take place.

Negotiating multiple changes or ‘stressors’ within a relatively short period of time can have a significant negative impact on our ability to cope, especially if concerns accumulate, co-exist and persist, and are not addressed at significant time points by well-equipped supportive figures. Primary-secondary school transition is no exception. It is a critical time period for children, that can have both short-and long-term implications for their adjustment. Covid-19, an additional stressor, is likely to heighten the impact, and lead to many Year 6 children feeling anxious and apprehensive about the here-and-now, in addition to their next chapter. So, what can we do on both a small and large scale to support children during this period of time?

We know children’s mental health and wellbeing is also largely shaped by their feelings of control, safety, and emotional resilience; increasing children’s resilience and ability to cope is one way to approach school transition, in addition to school-wide and wider systemic level interventions. In the context of primary-secondary school transition provision, against the backdrop of Covid-19, supporting children to develop emotional competence and psychological resilience will not only help children cope with the uncertainty surrounding coronavirus in the short term, but could also feed-forward to primary-secondary school transition in September.

Since the publication of the Green Paper, ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’ (2018), there has been a concentrated focus on supporting children’s emotional well-being within the school environment; however, what is to say that ‘the school environment’ only constitutes the physical stature of the school building? During this time of crisis, the internet can step in to support children, their families and teachers. Virtual transition work from live tours of the secondary school and interactive maps of the building, to moderated discussions between pupils and primary and secondary school staff, could provide much needed transition exposure, and reassure all involved for when schools restart (hopefully) in September. The internet could also be used as a vehicle to share resources to enable communication about the present and the future within families.

Research has shown that for Year 6 and 7 children, the people who helped the most to prepare them for secondary school transition were their parents/guardians. In addition, children who perceive parents/guardians as available, open to communication and involved, show better adjustment. Thus, discussions between Year 6 children and parents, adults and older children who have already made the transition from primary to secondary school about their experiences, can help prepare Year 6 children for their move ahead. However, it is important to ensure that these discussions are sensitive, and child led as too much discussion can also be harmful (see Bagnall, Skipper and Fox, 2019, for discussion of the importance of gradual and sensitive transition exposure).

Primary-secondary school transition also needs to be positioned as a continuation and progression, as opposed to a loss; children who miss primary school are shown to report greater transition problems. Supporting children manage anxieties is even more important now given the sadness that will be associated with the missed opportunities Year 6 children will be experiencing in the coming weeks. Thus, discussions focussed on moving on can help children come to terms with the loss, but also look ahead to new and exciting opportunities.

To summarise, poor adjustment over primary-secondary school transition may in part be shaped by a mismatch between children’s concerns regarding secondary school and the repertoire of skills they can draw on to address them. Activities that focus on improving children’s confidence, self-esteem and feelings of control, in addition to developing awareness of their self-influence – in other words, how our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are interlinked –  play a key role in supporting children’s short- and long-term adjustment, and are vital during this time to provide much needed hope. See Bagnall (2020) for a full outline of the Talking about School Transition (TaST) emotional-centred intervention.

Whilst the recommendations discussed above, which have been informed by a rigorous literature review in addition to preliminary research conducted with key stakeholders in the UK and US, have more immediate implications for transfer parents and children, they also have key implications for policymakers. There is need for the DfE to raise the profile and draw schools’ attention to the significance for children’s adjustment in them negotiating two major changes (covid-19 and school transition). Whilst the former is to some extent out of our control, I would argue that there is much that can be done by policymakers to support current transfer children. In the short term, this may be providing key stakeholders access to wider evidence-informed approaches in order to support children’s emotional resilience and coping skills. Whereas, when it is safe for schools to reopen,  perhaps we should delay children’s transition to secondary school and instead allow them to start back at primary school for a few weeks to gain some of the knowledge and skills discussed above, as well as to say their proper goodbyes and obtain closure, before moving on to secondary school.

Charlotte is researching for a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University, after completing her BSc Dual Honours Degree in English and Psychology in 2016 and Masters Degree in Child Development. She has a keen interest in child development, particularly primary-secondary school transition and how to improve this apprehensive and stressful period of time.

For more support in the area of school transitions, or for the TaST resources please contact Charlotte Bagnall: charlotte.bagnall2@stu.mmu.ac.uk

The following websites may also be useful to support children and families manage anxiety during this time:

https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/bps-offers-advice-schools-parents-and-carers-help-children-through-uncertainty

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers

Chris O’Leary on the particular vulnerabilities to COVID-19 infection of people experiencing homelessness and how policy makers need to tread carefully not to make a bad problem worse

One group of people face a triple whammy because of the lockdown are those experiencing homelessness. Whether living on the street, in a hostel, or in temporary accommodation, homeless people are more at risk of contracting the disease, more likely (particularly those sleeping rough and experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness) to have underlying health problems, and also face reductions and changes in the services on which they rely.

The Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States has issued guidance to public services and charities on what best to do in the current crisis, but no advice has yet been published here. Because there are significant differences between the UK and USA in terms of our homeless populations, much of the CDC advice is not applicable in a UK context, and some of it (for example, keeping homeless people on the streets) would probably not be politically acceptable here. But some of the advice is certainly sound, and UK homeless services, local authorities, and others involved in homeless policy should consider whether to follow the CDC advice.

Of particular importance is that homeless people should be involved in decisions that affect them and their social networks. Much work has been done in Manchester and elsewhere around co-production, in involving homeless people in decisions about what and how services they receive. It would be tempting to simply dump these initiatives and return to a top down approach to service provision. But steps to reduce transmission are likely to be less successful if homeless people are not given choice and voice in decisions about how services need to change during the lockdown. Importantly, involving homeless people in this way might actually increase the success of the lockdown; rough sleepers often have extensive social networks with each other, and can provide help and advice to services to help identify others and help keep them safe.

Several homeless charities have already raise significant concerns about the transmission risks at hostels, Somewhere Safe to Stay hubs, and other accommodation and support services for homeless people. Many hostels have group sleeping arrangements and communal spaces for eating etc, and significant work will be required to reduce transmission risks. The government has recently called for hotels to be used, and much work has been done here in Greater Manchester, directed by the Mayor Andy Burnham, to access such accommodation through the Greater Manchester Homeless Action Network. This is great, and will certainly help physically isolate people in a way that is simply not possible in most homeless hostels. But it is essential to remember that many rough sleepers will find it difficult to cope with the silence and isolation of being in a single hotel room, as they often have considerable experience of living and sleeping in communal arrangements. Wider support may be needed to ensure they are not cut off from friends at this time.

Homeless people living in temporary accommodation – in bed and breakfast and homeless hostels – often don’t have such networks. Temporary accommodation is often used to provide shelter to people who have been assessed as homeless and who are waiting to be housed by their local authority. More likely to be women and often with children, local councils will already be working hard to ensure their safety at this time. Recent changes to the Local Housing Allowance should be helpful here if the local authority uses the private sector to discharge its duties, and additional rent guarantees and support might also be useful.

It is also essential that the lockdown does not provide another excuse to stigmatise and criminalise rough sleepers. Last year, Manchester City Council proposed a whole raft of measures aimed at rough sleepers to ‘protect public spaces’, which had the effect of criminalising some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our society. During the lockdown, many rough sleepers will simply have nowhere else to go, and it is essentially that police and other agencies treat them slightly differently to others who make active decisions to ignore the Stay at Home restrictions. Street outreach must and should continue, working with other agencies to help identify and support rough sleepers in a way that is safe and supportive for all involved. That means that street outreach staff must have the same protections as A&E and hospital staff.

Finally, some homeless people will get sick, and will need hospital care. It is essential that, if and when they get better, their discharge from hospital is coordinated with local homelessness services and charities to ensure they do not return to street. This is also important if they don’t need overnight hospital care.

Dr. Chris O’Leary FHEA is the deputy director of The Policy Evaluation and Research Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University and a foremost researcher into policy making.

LATEST PUBLICATION: Albertson, K, Fox, C, O’Leary, C and Painter, G (2020) Towards a theoretical framework for social impact bonds, NonProfit Policy Forum, https://doi.org/10.1515/npf-2019-0056

Carrie Adamson on how policy and guidance on home schooling for those parents in isolation with their children could benefit from listening to the experiences of those who already do it

School is out, and in these uncertain times, nobody can be sure for how long.  Before our children’s time is filled activities that replicate (to varying degrees) the classroom experience, perhaps we should briefly pause and question the purpose of any intervention.

Researchers normally study the impact of school absence on attainment in the context of regular truanting, which is likely to have underlying causes such as family issues, bullying, mental health or other illnesses.  Government data suggests that delaying entry to reception year until compulsory school age has no negative effect with the deferred summer-born children actually scoring slightly higher on phonics tests than their counterparts (although the difference was not statistically significant).  However, early analysis suggests that these children are more likely to come from white families with a higher than average income with almost half earning over £50,000 (Gov.uk, 2018).  My research suggests that those who choose to flexi school or temporarily home educate until the child is a certain age will almost all be providing a stimulating learning environment during their time out of school.

In the current scenario, all children are now out of school.  Of concern is that whilst at home, some will undoubtedly receive much more parental attention than others, and not everybody has access to a periodic table jigsaw, bulging bookshelves and craft materials.  The ability of some parents to provide an inspirational education for their children is well-documented in literature on home education (see Kraftl, 2013, Kunzman, 2009). However, this can be variable and the oft criticised 2009 ‘Badman Review’ claimed that good outcomes were down to the influence of well-educated parents.  We cannot deny that some parents are simply able to facilitate their children’s learning more proficiently.  Katz et al (2011) conducted research on parental attitudes to their children’s homework and established that if parents found helping their children to be enjoyable and valuable there was less likely to be negative emotion associated with it.  This enabled them to be “more able to be empathetic to their child and behave in ways that support the child’s needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy” (2011:382).

The effect of poverty on educational outcomes is also well documented but unfortunately there is no room for a discussion on it here (see Jensen, 2009 for advice on how to mitigate children’s adverse home environments in the classroom).  We must bear in mind that many families are already suffering due to job losses despite this being only the beginning of the pandemic.  In addition to having fewer resources, extreme parental stress caused by poverty may lead to an unstable environment in which to carry out school work, and even children being left alone or with siblings as childcare providers and schools close their doors.  Parents who do not have the skills to support their children may feel helpless and parents who are worrying about sick friends and relatives should not be expected to take on this responsibility.

So what can we do to ensure this unprecedented situation does not exacerbate the achievement gap caused by those with resources having even more of an advantage than usual?  Much can be learned from the home education communities.  Due to the increase in popularity of home education both in the UK and internationally, there already exists a network of parents who know how best to manage.  Disseminating information and ensuring that hard to reach families are targeted is essential.  The first port of call for many parents with questions about home education is the charity Education Otherwise who provide links to other sites as well as advice and forums. Scaling up or establishing a similar national service would help establish a curated repository of valuable resources that all families could draw on.  Similarly, the integration of TV programmes via CBeebies and CBBC is of course achievable.  These already have an educational element and could be modified to contain more science, history and geography for example in a fun and interesting format e.g. as with the award winning Horrible Histories.  Exercise, mindfulness and nature programmes would be easy to incorporate amongst the more academic ones.  In the evenings, these channels could provide information for parents regarding their own wellbeing and practical ideas.  Public service broadcasting should be used to raise awareness for parents whose children would not normally access these channels.

For those struggling to know where to start, a helpline staffed by teachers and mentors who can offer support with a focus on parental well-being must be put in place and parents should be made aware of this service.  The home education community should be encouraged to be involved in facilitating in any way possible e.g. by sharing video ideas for activities.  Funding should be made available for packs of basic resources like paints, paper, pencils and glue that will be necessary for some families and of course, to facilitate access to a computer and the internet.  In the short-term, schools may have materials they can send to those without.  To avoid these children becoming isolated from friends, schools should be encouraged to establish video chats for small group discussions and sharing of drawings or activities and a scheme of linking local parents could be established.

In short, connectedness is going to be very important during these lockdown periods, and especially so for those who lack basic connections.

Carrie Adamson is a final year part-time PhD student and graduate teaching assistant at Manchester Metropolitan University.  Her  doctoral thesis is entitled ‘Stepping out of the System? A grounded theory on the process of becoming a home or alternative educator’.   She has assisted on projects involving technology, mathematics and science education having previously worked as a biology teacher in schools and sixth form colleges.  

Department for Education (2018) Delayed school admissions for summer born pupils Research report May 2018.

Jensen, E., 2009. Teaching with poverty in mind: What being poor does to kids’ brains and what schools can do about it. AScD.

Katz, I., Kaplan, A. & Buzukashvily, T. 2011, “The role of parents’ motivation in students’ autonomous motivation for doing homework”, Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 376-386.

Kraftl, P. 2013, “Towards geographies of ‘alternative’ education: a case study of UK home schooling families: Towards geographies of ‘alternative’ education”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 436-450.

Morton, R. 2011. Balancing Pleasure and Pain: the role of motherhood in home-education. PhD Thesis, University of Warwick.

Samantha Baron on the urgent need to grip social care that the COVID-19 response has highlighted

Over the last twenty years, successive governments have attempted to solve the social care problem. Five Commissions, twelve Green and White papers later, the social care system remains fragile, substantially underfunded and at times, a complex quagmire for people hoping to receive services. Add in a worldwide pandemic, COVID-19, and the extra demands placed on an already fragmented social care system, tensions begin to rise. Tensions, which reflect the fragility of the health and care system and the inherent fault lines established by the creation of the welfare state in 1945 and the birth of the NHS in 1948.

Calls for the immediate discharge from hospitals to create extra bed space, stories of care homes refusing to accept anyone who hasn’t been COVID-19 tested and a lack of consideration of the need for personal protective equipment for the social care workforce, are examples of these dual fault lines which continue to assume health and care needs are separate entities requiring separate and distinct funding streams. Placing extra demands on an already fragile system, and fragility gives way to crisis and crisis quickly becomes wide scale collapse. With over 25,000 care organisations providing services to over 2 million people per day, collapse is not an option.

Call it a crisis or a tipping point, care and the right to receive care is and should continue to be a basic human right, the hallmark of a civilised society. Only last week though the introduction of emergency COVID legislation (The Coronavirus Bill) did we again witness the downgrading of social care by removal of the statutory duty to provide care under the Care Act 2014 to powers to provide,  pitching the needs of vulnerable people against each other. Simply reframing human rights through emergency legislation doesn’t make need go away.

Evidence of new community based ways of working is emerging to show us all that communities are strong, purposeful, value based, passionate and importantly believe in local freedoms for local communities. This could be the foundation of a new social order for social care. For example, Asset Based Community Development or Place Based Working suggests that if we place finances, decision making and service delivery in the hand of individuals and communities, we achieve much better outcomes for those who need care and those who provide care. And this is the cornerstone of a good care system. It recognises that people who need care are part of a wider system of interconnectedness whereby the individual provider of care is often part of local communities and in turn may at some point need care for themselves or for their families. In this respect, social care is different from health care, often by its degree of social connections.

Understanding care and care delivery as a set of social networks and social connections allows us to consider a new settlement for social care. A social care system which places people, families and communities  central to social arrangements and social partnerships, becomes preventative in outlook, cohesive and collegiate in approach and delivery and most importantly ensures public (statutory)services are only required in the most pressing of situations. When our parents dementia becomes too difficult to cope with, when our teenage daughter who has autism wants to live independently or when our families find the pressure of poverty too much and need support to help parent and raise our children. This is a care system which is based on care. It is care system which requires funding and funding which is bottom up in design, avoiding top down policy led approaches which are all too often characterised by performance indicators, scalability, profit and the co ordination of market plurality.

Social connections, social networks and community relationships are based on social activism. Activism, that builds upon the natural resources and assets of people, families and local communities. Here’s how we and policy makers can get active to support and promote social care during this pandemic. Volunteer with one of your local authority COVID-19 community hubs. Become a street coordinator for vulnerable people living in your area, join your local community together using technology to develop and enhance our social connectedness, start a street level singing group or simply join the Whatsapp groups and community Facebook groups which have been set up to support people who may be isolated.

For policy makers, just one small thing. Release additional funding through the voluntary/charitable sector who know and serve communities well. Invest in this infrastructure at a time of greatest need and it will, in turn, be there when we need to pick up the pieces and genuinely embrace asset based approaches as a foundation for an effective social care system.

Professor Samantha Baron is Professor in Social Work at Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of Social Care and Social Work. Professor Baron regularly advises government on matters relating to care, social care and in particular social work practice. 

Ashwin Kumar on the challenges in the government’s economic rescue package

As we stay at home, and businesses face unprecedented pressures, the threat from coronavirus to our economic health is clear. Thousands of low-paid workers have been made redundant and more face the same fate.
For those on zero-hours contracts or forced to work as self-employed contractors, there’s no redundancy process: they may already have been told there’s no work this week, next, or the week after. Even if work is still available, once forced into self-isolation, there’s no sick pay. From the point of view of some employers, the whole point of these contracts is being able to avoid such costs.
A few days ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a wide-ranging package of measures designed to keep people in jobs. ‘Furloughed’ workers will have their wages subsidised by 80% to allow employers to keep them on through this difficult period. Conspicuous by its absence, however, was similar protection for the self-employed. Likewise, questions remain about those whose contractual status means they have already been told there’s no work.
One response is to ask whether a universal basic income is the solution. What if, the question is asked, the government were just to give everyone some cash? Wouldn’t that ease the pain of those whose circumstances are riven with financial worry? To this end, the Labour MP Alex Sobel has proposed an emergency universal basic income.
How much would this cost? To pay the new out-of-work benefit levels to every person in the UK –£94.25 a week for a working age adult (and slightly different rates for children and pensioners) – would require £6.5 billion a week. Is the bill an objection? Perhaps not in itself. Traditionally, governments have funded wars from borrowing and then paid back the debt over the following decades. If today’s situation is just as unprecedented, maybe a basic income bill of £80 billion to cover 12 weeks is justified. However, if we have to keep this up for a year, we’re talking about around £340 billion.
To put these big numbers in context, total public sector spending in the UK this year is just under £900 billion. So this would mean increasing public expenditure by a third. Before we take on such a large bill, we should ask ourselves if we could spend this money more effectively on anything else.
The approach taken by the chancellor was to concentrate the government’s financial muscle on those who need it most: supporting employers to keep paying their staff, and increasing Universal Credit by £20 to £94.25 a week.
The Treasury has not put out detailed estimates of the costs of each part of the Chancellor’s package. However, a week ago, the Resolution Foundation estimated that increasing basic benefit levels from £73.10 to £100 per week – slightly more than announced by the Chancellor – would cost £10 billion if kept up for a year. This is a fraction of the cost of the basic income, because it is far more targeted.
Benefit amounts, however, aren’t the full story. People often advocate a basic income because of problems with the DWP’s delivery regime. The list is long, and includes the five-week wait for first payments of Universal Credit, punitive sanctions for minor infractions – far in excess of what would be legal in the world of work – and an assumption baked into the system that self-employed people are better off than they say. The combined effect is a system that far too many people don’t want to engage with if they can help it. The result is benefit take-up lower than it should be – help doesn’t go to all who need it.
The DWP has announced some relaxations: face-to-face appointments at the jobcentre are suspended, and the minimum income floor for self-employed workers won’t apply. They need to go much further. They could suspend repayment of Universal Credit advance payments, suspend benefit sanctions, and put much more effort into encouraging people who are struggling to seek the help to which they are entitled.
In the end, the question for basic income advocates is whether more could be done by concentrating on those who need it most. For any amount of expenditure, the most vulnerable can be helped by much more if payments are targeted. The question for its opponents is whether the government is ready to make changes to delivery of benefits so that it becomes a service that genuinely helps people through this crisis, when so many are struggling through no fault of their own?

Professor Ashwin Kumar is a professor in social policy at Manchester Metropolitan University’s and part of the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit. He has worked in senior government roles including in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). At the DWP, he developed Pensim2, the government’s world-leading dynamic microsimulation model to predict pensioner incomes over the next 50 years and helped design the State Second Pension – the 2002 reform of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS)

Katy Jones on her experience of giving evidence to a parliamentary committee

The government’s flagship welfare reform policy Universal Credit (UC) brings together what were previously separate systems of out-of-work (e.g. Job Seekers Allowance) and in-work financial support (e.g. Working Tax Credits). As a policy with implications for the workplace, the absence of employer voices in research and policy development in this space is surprising – an absence we have begun to address through a recent piece of research funded by the ESRC’s Productivity Insights Network.

Issues explored in this research resonate with some of the questions central to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s Inquiry into Universal Credit, which is exploring the extent to which its design meets the needs of claimants in today’s labour market. After noticing the call for evidence on Twitter, I was considering providing a written response to the Inquiry (I wasn’t sure) when I got a phone call from the Committee’s policy analyst inviting me to give oral evidence.

This was quite terrifying: giving oral evidence (any oral presentation makes me nervous, no matter how many I’ve done over the years), which would be televised (yikes, my failure will be laid bare for all to see for the rest of time!) to the economic affairs select committee (I’m not an economist) to provide evidence on a range of questions, some of which I thought my specific research projects hadn’t necessarily provided the answers to. But the whole point of research is to make an impact – so I accepted the invitation.

In the run up to the evidence session, I prepped my response to the questions outlined in call for written evidence, and then additional questions provided a few days beforehand. The support of Manchester Metropolitan University colleagues was crucial here – both in offering suggestions, but also reassurance, helping me to realise that I could have an opinion on matters even if I had not personally researched them.

The evidence session itself was nerve-wracking, but I’m happy with how it went. Through drawing on my own research and knowledge of the qualitative evidence base, I felt I was able to complement the quantitative knowledge of the other panel member (Senior Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies). The Committee and their Assistant were welcoming and keen to hear about the evidence we brought to the table, and moral support was on hand from my colleague Professor Ashwin Kumar, who came along and took me for a much-needed cup of tea after the session.

The key things I learnt from this experience were to a) if invited to give evidence (try to) keep calm, and remember that you have been invited because of your expertise (ignore the imposter syndrome!) b) don’t feel constrained by the confines of the particular pieces of research you personally have conducted – you’re an expert on your topic and can draw on your knowledge of the wider evidence base and c) respond to Inquiries if you think your research is in some way relevant.

Dr Katy Jones is Senior Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Centre for Decent Work and Productivity.

Ann Coffey MP (Stockport) posed a tantalising set of challenges for academics with an interest in policy impact. Ask a different question, break out of your silos.

[S]he started with a tour through her recent personal journey. Having left the Labour Party after a lifetime of service as a Councillor and for 26 years as the Member of Parliament for Stockport, she is one of the MPs to have founded the Independent Group for Change.

“But in that time she’s seen a dramatic shift in public attitudes. “I’ve never known politicians to be as despised as they are now. People are in despair of all of them. There’s a lot of anxiety about, whether that’s going to happen to them, to their children, with the environment, with Brexit. The political system feels like it’s breaking down and as it’s a system based on majority government , then what are you left with? A government that can’t function and can’t get its business done.
“The immediate policy area for my new group is focused on Brexit, we’re a Remain party, but we are looking beyond that and there is a feeling that something needs to change.”

She has the education brief for the group, which is a natural progression from her longstanding interest in children’s policy issues. “we need to put the whole child at the centre of a series of questions about their opportunities and how we support them throughout their life, to ask questions like what is the purpose of our universities.

“I’ve never known politicians to be as despised as they are now.”