Strong research links exist with local authorities, mental and primary care health trusts, primary and secondary schools, community organisations and businesses. Excellent observational and experimental laboratory spaces are available for research purposes. The Centre produces high quality research evidence that informs the complex policy and practice decisions that have to be made on a daily basis regarding the well-being of adults, children and their families. The recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) confirmed our research excellence, rating 90% of our research to be of international standing with 55% judged to be "world leading" or "internationally excellent".
These are uncertain times for children and families as a new government takes steps to implement child and family policy in a context of financial constraints. For the research world there is increasing pressure to ensure that we generate research findings that are practical, useful and have a positive and demonstrable impact on the lives of children and families.
The Centre for Research on Children and Families has continued over the last year to play its part in providing an evidence base to support policy and practice. Important projects that will have an impact, such as the Supporting Birth Families and Contact in Adoption study, part of the DCSF Adoption Research Initiative, have concluded and reached the dissemination phase. This study is the focus of this year’s annual centre conference and has led to the publication of two books by BAAF.
New research contracts have been awarded and projects are starting. Two are based on new partnerships. An important Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project on pre-proceedings processes is a partnership between the Centre and the School of Law at the University of Bristol. A major new project on looked after children and offending, funded by the Big Lottery Research Programme, is a partnership between the Centre and TACT (The Adolescent and Children’s Trust). There are also important on-going projects, such as the analysis of Serious Case Reviews, which continues to be high profile as we attempt to determine how best to safeguard the lives of children from infancy to adolescence. The Centre’s partnership with the NSPCC, provides a strong platform for sustaining safeguarding research and influencing national policy and practice.
Over the year our research has continued to play a significant part in securing the case for ‘father-sensitive’ employment provision, increasing fathers’ availability to children in their first year of life. We welcomed elements of the Additional Paternity Leave and Pay legislation, although our preferred, more expensive, option was not adopted.
The Centre has a strong record on dissemination that informs practice. Examples in this year’s report include individual specialist projects, such as the partnership with agencies in Norway and the UK to implement the secure base caregiving model. And there are wider examples of knowledge transfer, such as Making Research Count, a partnership with local authorities in the region and with other universities nationally.
The Centre continues to have an established place internationally through our place in Childwatch International and other networks, such as the International Network on Parental Leave research, and the advisory work we do across the world. In this difficult year ahead we hope that national governments and local policy makers will continue to make research- informed decisions which will improve and not put further at risk the lives of children and families in the most economically and emotionally disadvantaged environments.
