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Key messages There has been a huge expansion in research-policy engagement initiatives. These are mostly poorly described, specified, and evaluated. The lack of strategy may lead to significant harms (for example, increased competition, wasted time and resources). Future initiatives should draw on and build the existing evidence about what works. Background For over four decades, researchers have written about how evaluation and research evidence is routinely ignored by decision makers ( Weiss, 1993 ; Ham et al, 1995 ; Black and Donald, 2001
Key messages Nursing and health science researchers conduct a wide range of research-policy engagement activities. More impactful relationship-based strategies are largely the preserve of more experienced academics. Support and specific development would accelerate researchers’ policy impact capacity. Consistent use of terminology that better reflects the dynamic, indirect way in which evidence informs policy might be advantageous. Introduction Academic research is an important source of evidence for informing policymaking. There is increasing
48 3 Getting in, being heard and influencing change: the labours of policy engagement in employment and social security research Hayley Bennett and Katy Jones The SPA Employment and Social Security Policy Group Introduction Over the past decade, the UK social security system has undergone a period of unprecedented reform. Universal Credit (UC), the flagship policy of welfare reform introduced in 2013, brings together six existing working-age benefits and merges what were previously separate systems of out-of-work (eg Jobseeker’s Allowance) and in
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Engagement with non-academic groups and actors – such as policy-makers, industry, charities and activist groups, communities, and the public – in the co-production of knowledge and real-world impact is increasingly important in academic research. Drawing on empirical research, interdisciplinary methodologies, and broad international perspectives, this collection offers a critical examination of the liminal space of interactions between policy and research as spaces of difference and engagement, showing them to be far from apolitical.
The authors consider what, and who, are present in these encounter spaces and examine how pre-existing perceptions about differences in social identity, positionality and knowledge can affect engagement, equity and research outcomes.
Rather than being seen simply as social policy implementors, in recent decades there has been increasing recognition of social workers as professionals with unique knowledge and insights to contribute to policy formulation and social justice.
This book offers a path-breaking, evidence-based theoretical framework for understanding why social workers engage in policy, both as professionals and citizens, and the impact of their actions. Drawing on concepts from social work and the political, sociological and policy sciences, the authors set out the implications of this framework for research, education and practice.
Furthering social justice and human rights is a fundamental principle underlying the social work profession. Engaging in social policy formulation processes is a major route through which social workers can realise this goal. This type of social work activity has been termed ‘policy practice’.
The aim of this book is to shed light on policy practice in social work discourse, education and practice in eight liberal democracies. This is the first effort to undertake a cross-national study of social worker engagement in social policy formulation processes. The book offers insights into questions such as ‘what is the importance attributed to social worker involvement in policy change in the social work discourse and education in different countries?’ and ‘how do social workers influence social policy in various national settings?’
These issues are relevant to social worker practitioners, students, educators and researchers, as well as to social policy scholars, who are interested in the role of professionals in social policy formulation.
Drawing on a wide array of policy domains and events, this book provides an innovative account of social control and behaviourism within welfare systems and social policies, and the implications for disadvantaged groups.
This accessible collection reviews the controls, assumptions and persuasions applied to individuals and households and explores broader themes, including how ‘new behaviourism’ was consolidated during the New Labour and Cameron periods.
Social policy and social control offers timely engagements with key issues for researchers and policy makers, and is relevant for students in social policy, sociology, socio-legal studies, social work and social care, disability studies, human geography, politics and public policy, and gender, family and life course studies.
Measuring research impact and engagement is a much debated topic in the UK and internationally. This book is the first to provide a critical review of the research impact agenda, situating it within international efforts to improve research utilisation. Using empirical data, it discusses research impact tools and processes for key groups such as academics, research funders, ‘knowledge brokers’ and research users, and considers the challenges and consequences of incentivising and rewarding particular articulations of research impact.
It draws on wide ranging qualitative data, combined with theories about the science-policy interplay and audit regimes to suggest ways to improve research impact.
In this exciting book, leading fatherhood scholars from Europe and Scandinavia offer unique insights into how to research fathers and fatherhood in contemporary society.
Outlining research methods in detail, including examples of large scale studies, online research, surveys and visual and aural methods, they explore how each approach worked in practice, what the benefits and pitfalls were, and what the wider and future application of the chosen research methods might be.
Covering a wide range of subjects from non-resident fathers to father engagement in child protection, this major contribution to the field also critiques and addresses the notion that fathers, especially young fathers, can be ‘hard to reach’. Essential reading for both students and policy makers in a fast-growing area of interest.
Social justice and social policy in Scotland offers a critical engagement with the state of social policy in one of the devolved nations of the UK, a decade after the introduction of devolution.
Promoting greater social justice has been held up as a key vision of successive Scottish administrations since devolution began. It is argued throughout this important book that the analysis of Scottish social policy must therefore be located in wider debates around social injustice as well as about how the devolution process affects the making, implementation and impact of social policy.
Social justice and social policy in Scotland focuses on a diverse range of topics and issues, including income inequalities, work and welfare, criminal justice, housing, education, health and poverty, each reflecting the themes of social inequality and social justice.
This book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, policy makers and practitioners as well as students of social policy and of society in Scotland and other devolved nations.
