Negotiations are under way with the Open University and the Peninsula Medical School to develop our Ph.D training into a new doctoral programme to be available from 2010. The Unit has been provided its doctoral students with a taught curriculum for some years. The emphasis is on the application of research to policy and practice.
What if commissioners of social services could have their own version of "Which?" magazine that could tell them the impact of competing investment choices on child and adult well-being, as well as the costs and economic returns of various portfolios of prevention and early intervention programmes?
What if this tool - using the highest standards of scientific evidence - could be tailored to the needs and circumstances of children and adults in these policy makers' particular areas or jurisdictions?
The Social Research Unit is currently translating the economic model and software tool for use in the UK that was pioneered by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) and used for more than a decade to make investment decisions in a wide range of policy areas in the American state of Washington. The UK version will be made freely available to inform central and local government investment decisions.
At this session, Steve Aos, Director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy will will describe the strategy that WSIPP is taking to advise the state legislature to improve outcomes for less money, with lessons for UK policy makers. Michael Little, Co-director of the Social Research Unit, will describe the work to translate the model for use in the UK.
Aos, who previously gave the 2010 Social Research Unit Annual Lecture, has 35 years of experience conducting cost-benefit analyses and communicating the results to policy makers in a wide range of public policy areas, as well as in the private sector.
When: May 12, 2011, 11am-3pm
Where: London's Living Room, City Hall, London This seminar is free but you must reserve a place to attend.
To reserve a seat now, follow this link: Reservations
The Social Research Unit offers a curriculum for the training of research students to supplement orthodox university programmes leading to a PhD qualification. The research curriculum is part of the Common Language project and mirrors another training programme in development designed for practitioners working with children in need. Both courses share the conceptual framework that underpins the Common Language work.
This year's annual lecture will host Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health.
There have been several major breakthroughs in neuro-science in the last two decades. These are beginning to influence the formation of public policy, and the way in which children's services engage with children. Much of the data emphasises the importance of the early years. But science is revealing the importance of subsequent sensitive periods in brain development, in the primary school years, in adolescence and early adulthood that all promise new ways of promoting health and development of children. Professor Shonkoff is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts in neuro-science and its application to policy and practice.
Jack P. Shonkoff, MD, is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education, and founding director of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. He also chairs the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, a multi-university collaboration comprising leading scholars in neuroscience, developmental psychology, pediatrics, and economics, whose mission is to bring sound and accurate science to bear on public decision making affecting the lives of young children.
The theme for this year's lecture is on "Leveraging Developmental Science to Strengthen the Foundations of Lifelong Learning, Behaviour and Health." This will be a rare opportunity to hear from a person widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities in neuroscience and its application to policy and practice.
When: Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 5PM
Where: at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE.
The Annual Lecture and reception are free but you must reserve a place to attend. To reserve a place now, follow this link: http://sru2011annuallecture.eventbrite.com
The lecture will be preceded by a reception.
When: 7 July, 2011, 5pm
Where: Royal Society of Medicine, One Wimpole Street, London W1G 0AE
Other events
The Social Research Unit invites you to a seminar with Christina Salmivalli, Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Turku, Finland.
Christina Salmivalli has been responsible for the development and evaluation of the KiVa anti-bullying programme, now widely implemented in Finnish schools. The breakthrough in Christina's research was to understand the role of bystanders, children who neither bully nor are bullied but are present when bullying takes place.
The KiVa programme helps all children in a classroom or school to play a role in reducing bullying activity. The experimental evaluation indicates that the approach has substantial successes. KiVa is also marked apart by the success of its roll out across Finland without an appreciable reduction in impact on child outcomes. Christina will talk about her work and its potential relevance to reducing anti-social behaviour in the UK.
When: Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Where: Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, UK
Time: From 5:00 to 7:00 PM (GMT)
In a time of unprecedented austerity, government is asking the public and voluntary sectors to do more with less.
The government's Big Society initiative has also put a new emphasis on localism and partnership. But what can this mean in practice for those with the responsibility to deliver better outcomes for children and young people?
One answer is Communities that Care (CtC), one of the only well-articulated, manualised approaches to making community decisions about how to invest in children's well-being.
Engaging local people, including young people, local authorities and voluntary organisations is at the heart of the step-by-step CtC approach to introduce a tailor-made portfolio of evidence-based programmes proven to reduce the problem behaviours that are most damaging: youth crime and anti-social behaviour, substance abuse, school-age pregnancy and academic failure.
Professor Rico Catalano will be the keynote speaker at this half-day conference on Communities that Care jointly sponsored by the Social Research Unit and Catch22 (catch-22.org.uk). Dr. Catalano is Director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, Seattle. Catalano has been the co-developer of many evidence-based family- and school-based programmes and was co-principal investigator in a randomised controlled study of CtC in 24 communities across 7 American states.
This half-day conference will be of particular interest to local and national policy makers, the community and voluntary sector, and practitioners and academics interested in all aspects of evidence-based practice.
When: May 18, 2011, 9am-2pm
Where: London's Living Room, City Hall, London
This seminar is free but you must reserve a place to attend.
To reserve a seat now, follow this link: Reservations
Centre for Social Policy Fellows Meeting
April 7 2011
This spring's fellows meeting will host David Gordon, Professor of Social Policy, University of Bristol, and Professor Ewan Anderson.
The event will take place at Dartington Hall, and will feature fellows from the Centre for Social Policy. To find out more about the event, please call Kay Turner at 01803-762-400.
The report by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the Spirit Level explores the apparent contradiction between the material success and social failings of many modern societies and argues that a key factor is inequality in societies rather than levels of poverty per se. Demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone in them, the well off as well as the poor.
David Gordon, who is conducting a large international comparative study of poverty, will discuss the latest thinking about the definitions and measurements used and the way these can be used to evaluate the Spirit Level thesis. The Social Research Unit has undertaken numerous epidemiological studies on the needs of children and families and will present findings from these, paying particular attention to the significance of poverty as an explanatory factor and the extent to which the Spirit Level thesis extends this knowledge.
Restorative justice is one of the three guiding planks (along with Prevention and Integration) in the proposals of the recent Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Anti Social Behaviour, Time for a Fresh Start – see www.preventionaction.com, and search for 18th November 2010 edition. Ewan Anderson will discuss the thinking behind this approach and the success of its recent implementation.
how to book
How to book by Phone
To book for events by phone; contact Kay Turner, Office Manager at +44-1803-762400.
How to book an event online
Click on the event title and you will find a registration for for each event.
Latest news
The Social Research Unit hosted its final seminar of the year with Christina Salmivalli, Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Turku, Finland.
On Tuesday, November 15th, 2011, Professor Christina Salmivalli presented at the Unit's final seminar of the year, hostedat the Royal Society of Medicine. Salmivalli has been responsible for the development and evaluation of the KiVa anti-bullying programme, now widely implemented in Finnish schools. The breakthrough in Christina's research was to understand the role of bystanders, children who neither bully nor are bullied but are present when bullying takes place.
The KiVa programme helps all children in a classroom or school to play a role in reducing bullying activity. The experimental evaluation indicates that the approach has substantial successes. KiVa is also marked apart by the success of its roll out across Finland without an appreciable reduction in impact on child outcomes. Christina will talk about her work and its potential relevance to reducing anti-social behaviour in the UK.
To learn more about what the Unit is doing in this area of work, please download the issue brief below. You can also download a copy of the presentation from the event.
The Social Research Unit, in collaboration with the Centre for Mental Health, are to host a round table discussion on evidence-based early intervention in mental health.
Following high-level interest in evidence-based approaches, we are bringing together a small group of individuals from the research, policy, local authority, philanthropic and third sector communities to contribute to how this work can be effectively achieved, with particular focus on how parents access interventions.
Cheryl Hopkins, Service Director for Strategy & Commissioning at Birmingham City Council, and the lead on the Brighter Futures programme (a strategy to improve outcomes, from high quality data, collected jointly by the Social Research Unit and Birmingham City Council) will be interviewed by Michael Little, Co-Director at the Unit, to discuss the strategy and lessons learnt. This part of the discussion is to be filmed and will be available here shortly.
Our Chair will be Sean Duggan, Chief Executive at the Centre for Mental Health; his colleague, Lorraine Khan, Project Lead for Children and Young People, will present on how to improve implementation and what the evidence tells us, followed by final discussions and questions.
Attached is the powerpoint presentation by Lorraine Khan on improving the delivery of early intervention programmes.
This year's Annual Lecture was presented by Professor Jack P Shonkoff, Founding Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, on "Leveraging Developmental Science to Strengthen the Foundations of Lifelong Learning, Behaviour and Health."
The Lecture took place on July 7th, 2011 at 5PM, at the Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE.
Breakthroughs in brain science may shape policy and services in years to come
Widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities in neuroscience and its application to policy and practice, Dr Shonkoff is the Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston.
The 2011 Social Research Unit Annual Lecture gave participants an opportunity to clarify the current state of play with regard to brain science. It provided an evolved argument regarding the value that might be placed on successive stages in a child's development from conception to early adulthood.
It also examined the ways in which society can nurture and threaten the development of future generations, with attention not just what governments do in the enactment of new legislation but also how communities, schools, and families can make a difference.
Dr Shonkoff is uniquely positioned to speak about these latest breakthroughs. In 2000, he chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission in the United States that wrote the landmark report From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. This seminal report shaped a research, development and policy agenda that has led to significant advances, so that many more children are exposed to early experiences that promote better outcomes throughout life.
A decade later, Dr Shonkoff is again charting the next major frontiers for research and development including new understanding of the body's stress response system and its effect on brain architecture, as well as the importance of developing social, emotional and executive function in early years for better outcomes throughout life.
More about Dr Jack Shonkoff
Dr Jack Shonkoff currently chairs the United States' National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, a multidisciplinary collaboration comprising leading scholars in neuroscience, psychology, pediatrics, and economics, whose mission is to bring credible science to bear on policy affecting young children.
He has authored more than 150 publications, including 9 books. Dr Shonkoff has received multiple professional honors, including elected membership to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the C. Anderson Aldrich Award in Child Development from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Distinguished Contributions to Social Policy Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.
Click on the following links to download a copy of the slideshow presented at the annual lecture and a copy of the Issue brief. Or view the Youtube clip of the presentation.