research and evaluation
The current Labour government has made a commitment to abolish child poverty in Britain by 2020. In its efforts to do so, a number of targets have been established and indicators of progress are being reviewed annually. However, tackling severe child poverty does not feature in these targets or indicators. In fact, although there is now a wealth of information about child poverty in Britain, very little is known about either the extent of severe child poverty or the children who are affected.
The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 extended the duties of local authorities toward homeless people in Scotland, while also recognising that Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) had an increasing role to play in providing housing for statutorily homeless households. A growing body of evidence suggests the use of Section 5 differs across Scotland and that its use may be less than had originally been anticipated. There also seems to be confusion regarding the purpose and scope of the requirements.
The Assessment, Intervention and Moving on project (AIM) provides a framework for the initial assessment of young people with sexually harmful behaviours in Greater Manchester to assist professionals to open a dialogue between partner assessors, young people and their families/carers, and to create consistency of assessments across agencies. AIM uses an assessment model to look at offence-specific factors, developmental factors, family/carer and environment/ community dynamics.
This episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series includes a segment on evidence based research. The government has been strongly committed to evidence-based policy and practice. It wants to use evidence of what works to inform and drive ambitious and innovative social programmes. Issues surrounding how evidence-based research is used and whether policy is based on evidence or informed by it.
Little is known about the influences of religious beliefs and practices on parenting adolescents. Yet religious beliefs and practices have the potential to profoundly influence many aspects of life, including approaches to parenting. This is particularly relevant with increasing diversity of religious affiliations in contemporary British society.
The first programme in the series looks at the American social psychologist Solomon Asch and his studies on conformity in the 1950s. Claudia Hammond investigates the reasons for conformity and asks whether we're more or less likely to conform today.
The authors, from Dorset Council, explain how they are trying to get the best out of the Integrated Children's System despite its limitations. The ICS was intended to enable a single consistent approach to case-based information gathering, case planning, case aggregation and case reviews. As such, the easily generated and clear reports would help social workers collect, organise, analyse and retrieve information.
'The same as you?' review of services for people with learning disabilities was published in 2000 and set out a 10-year programme of change that would support children and adults with learning disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders (including Asperger’s Syndrome) to lead full lives, giving them choice about where they live and what they do.
This report was produced by the Day Services Group, a subgroup of the National Implementation Group, which was set up to look at how day services in Scotland are putting the recommendations of The same as you? (SAY) into practice.
This research study was designed to examine the different factors that affect the work, savings and retirement decisions of ethnic minority groups. The aim of this qualitative research was to fill acknowledged gaps in existing research to ensure that policies are appropriate and sensitive to any cultural differences. The findings are based on depth interviews conducted with people from the six main ethnic minority groups in the UK (Indian, Pakistani, Black Caribbean, Black African, Bangladeshi and Chinese), including those below and above State Pension age.
This research into private fostering was commissioned by the DCSF and carried out by a team from the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF). The purpose of the research was to inform the DCSF Advisory Group on Private Fostering in making its recommendations to Ministers on increasing notifications of private fostering arrangements.

