Walking amongst Canada’s knowledge mobilizers: lessons and comparisons from a visit to York University Toronto

Sarah Morton Co-Director (Knowledge Exchange) reflects on a recent visit to Canada

I was fortunate enough for the ESRC to fund me for a visit to York University, Toronto Canada as part of my PhD studentship looking at how we assess the impact of research. The visit also chimed with my role as Co-Director (Knowledge Exchange) at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships. This blog reflects on some of by observations about the ways we do KE or KMb on opposite sides of the pond.

David Phipps, Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange at York was a wonderful host, who set up many meetings and exchanges with like-minded individuals and made me feel very welcome.

So the language is immediately different. No-one in my networks in the UK uses the term Knowledge Mobilization – and the ‘z’ makes it appear very North American to us. I also enjoyed the term ‘transition into lunch’ used at a conference! But overall there was more to unite than divide the respective communities in Scotland (UK) and Toronto. CRFR’s model of doing KE was still an exemplar, and there was lots of interest in my work on increasing and assessing research impact.

Day one I gave a presentation at the Ontario KMb community of practice – a wonderful way to make connections and set up further meetings. What interested me about the CoP was that it was a real mix of university-based and public/community based KE practitioners (in health, housing, schools), who all talked the same language around knowledge use. The CoP is large – over 100 members, so 40 can turn up to a meeting at any time, and a fairly high level, knowledgeable discussion of KE issues is possible in that forum. I struggle to think of an equivalent here, although we hope to set up a new KE network from CRFR in the Spring.

David Phipps’ Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York is part of the KE and Commercialisation department, but with a specific decision to make the KMb in social sciences distinctive, especially in terms of engagement with the local community. There are two main members of staff in the unit: Michael Johnny, and Krista Jonson, assisted by project staff, and graduate students at different times.What I found distinctive about their approach compared to my experience in the UK was:

• A university-wide approach to Knowledge Mobilization

• Having a help desk at events where community members can ask for assistance from the university – I can’t imagine some universities here offering such a service!

• Running plain language training and then producing briefings of peer-reviewed research across the university

• KM in the AM – breakfast community meetings

• Annual KMb Expo – where community groups engage with the unit

• Extensive use of social media: blog and twitter @researchimpact (although some groups in the UK are catching up with this and it has inspired me to do more @crfrtweets)

David and I met with some civil servants in the Ontario Provincial Government from across departments to have a fairly informal chat about KMb and government. They have an emerging KMb network within government with some dedicated resources, not unlike the KE unit within the Scottish Government. Many of the issues of trying to work across departments, timing and accessibility of research, and how to show the importance of research in creating impact resonated with concerns in Scotland and the UK.

Other meetings with students in Ben Levin’s department in OISE, with the Children’s Welfare Organisations and with other KE professionals in local authority, water board (!) and women’s health added to a very rich and rewarding visit. I even had dinner with my colleague from Edinburgh Sandra Nutley – a rare opportunity to catch up outwith work!

David and I have continued our collaboration, with David giving a keynote presentation at our 10th anniversary National Conference 'Influencing Society: the impact of social research'; us presenting some joint work on the role of knowledge brokers at the London Conference ‘Bridging the Gap between research, policy and practice’ in December 2011, and working on a joint paper on the same topic. I hope to return to Toronto in 2012, to present my work on assessing research impact and continue this fruitful collaboration.

Sarah Morton

Tacking Child Poverty in Scotland

The Campaign to End Child Poverty has today published new figures that provide a child poverty map of the whole of the UK, which identifies pockets of deprivation in Scotland. CRFR Co-Director, Kay Tisdall reflects on Scotland's record:

Scotland has a lengthy history of child poverty, compared to other parts of the UK and Europe more generally. This is fundamentally about inequality, about government policies, local and global economies, and not individual families' decisions -- the comparative research underlines this time and time again.

Individual decision do matter but too often there is an undue emphasis on supply (i.e. are individuals willing and ready to work) and to little, particularly in these times of recession, on demand (i.e. are there viable jobs to take up?). The welfare reform underway is going to make it even harder to 'make work pay' for many families.

We know the potential negative outcomes associated with children living in poverty, particularly when it is persistent and when associated with other risks. When we talk about individual family decisions, we need to remember that this means adult and parental decisions -- not children making decisions about income and employment. Children are in poverty through no decisions of their own, yet the impact on them is substantial. And I suggest it important to remember that, whether one thinks in terms of 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 children, that these numbers are very troubling.

Numbers may potentially go down for child poverty in Scotland. One hopes that the Scottish Government investment to date will have longer term effects, and that children's services will continue to have some protection despite general cutbacks. It is possible that, with relative measures of poverty, that as relative living standards go down so will poverty statistics -- but that is why one also needs to consider absolute measures of poverty. But with welfare reform and the recession, there are serious concerns about what will happen with child poverty in the short and medium term. One would anticipate that it will be very difficult to get down to one in 10 children without a very concerted effort at all levels of government.

This is where the Rights of Children and Young People Bill may help the Scottish Government, and all of us, keep centered on children's rights - which includes an adequate standard of living. If the Bill goes through, it should mean that we regularly 'proof' government policy to recognise its importance for children's lives - and policy is made with attention to their well-being.

New GUS findings

New findings from the Growing Up in Scotland study were published this week by the Scottish Government. Four new reports, using data from the first five years of GUS provide further evidence about the importance of children's early experiences in determining later outcomes.

Key findings:

* Parents most in need are those who are least likely to use services.

* Differences in cognitive ability between children from more and less advantaged groups found at age 3 persist at age 5.

* Over two in five children experience key events in their early life which can lead to negative child outcomes.

* Day-to-day parenting can influence child health.

Link to Press Release.

Links to the Research Summaries:

Parental service use and informal networks in the early years

Changes in child cognitive ability in the pre-school years

Parenting and children's health

Change in early childhood and the impact of significant events

More:

Listen to the presentations from our Annual Conference held in Glasgow on

19th May:

http://www.crfr.ac.uk/gus/events.html

Read Paul Bradshaw's blog on the value of longitudinal research for

evidence-based policy:

http://natcenblog.blogspot.com/

For further information about GUS please visit our website:

http://www.growingupinscotland.org.uk

For specific enquiries, please contact Lesley Kelly, GUS Dissemination

Officer on lesley.kelly@ed.ac.uk.

Making work-life balance work for all

It is inspiring and entertaining to hear men like Nigel Marsh address the issues of work-life balance as he does in his TED talk " How to make work-life balance work" broadcast this February. He points to the importance of day to day relationships and making small changes in how we spend our time with loved ones as the key to changing work-life balance. But the research evidence reminds us that not everybody’s lives allow the degree of power and control he can take for granted. CRFR's work on work-life balance for people on low incomes paints a picture of rather different, probably more difficult and certainly more restricted choices.

I welcome Nigel Marsh’s assertion that commercial companies should not be in charge of addressing work-life balance because they are designed to “get as much out of you as they can”. International comparisons suggests that the statutory requirements set by the state can make significant differences to the likelihood of people taking leave to spend time with their family. In our study of low-waged mothers working in the food retail sector (Working and Caring), work-life balance was achieved through choosing to work part time, accepting the struggle of reduced income, and through mutual support amongst women workers who helped each other out by swapping shifts in times of crisis, like a child being ill. Those with somewhat better paid albeit still low income jobs with supervisory responsibility found these kinds of crises much harder to deal with – they were the ones relying on the company’s work-life balance policies for support.

Nigel emphasises his role as a father but Lynn Jamieson reflected that work-life balance and making time for friends and family is an issue for all workers not just for those with children. In a briefing (Work-Life Balance Across the Lifecourse RB21 2005) based on our 2004 international conference on this topic, she also concluded that inequalities of gender, class, and ethnicity affect ways in which work-life issues will be experienced, and the ability to balance the demands of work with other needs. It is great to hear well-paid men like Nigel Marsh tackle the issues, but his experiences and recommendations may not translate to people in different circumstances.

In the end how we experience work-life balance is dependent on a mixture of state polices, individual circumstances and cultural factors. Our individual place in relation to these will be defined by how we relate to these norms and assumptions particularly in relation to gender roles and how men and women play their part in household, family and friendship responsibilities.

Written by Sarah Morton and Lynn Jamieson based on CRFR research:

Work Life Balance in Scottish Food Retail Companies full report (pdf)

Working and Caring Summary (pdf)

Work Life Balance Across the Lifecourse Research Briefing 21 2005 (pdf)

Caringscapes Research Briefing 13 2004 (pdf)

Image (c) iwishiwillican.com

The politics of happiness

As a PhD student seeking to understand subjective wellbeing[1], I am, of course, pleased that British politicians are beginning to take happiness seriously, but I can’t help be a little worried.

We increasingly agree that measuring happiness is a subjective exercise.

We seek more money, education, health, democracy, not as ends in themselves but as means to make people’s experiences of life more positive. Seeking to understand what actually makes people’s experiences of life more positive is therefore a vital aim of social policy.

In the light of this, and within the limits of such a short blog, my concerns with the current initiative in the UK are threefold:

Asking people how happy they are is not enough

The proposal to measure people’s perceptions of their own wellbeing recommends a series of detailed questions, based on 0-10 scales, to be integrated into national ONS surveys (Dolan et al. (2011). Some of these questions are broad, like” overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”, and some specific, either to a specific concept like, “overall, to what extent do you think that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?” or to a specific domain for example “how satisfied are you with your financial situation?” However I have a number of concerns about this approach.

Firstly do we know what we are measuring with broad questions? Asking questions using words like happy or satisfied without understanding what people think about when they make these assessments, make it impossible to know what could be done to increase subjective wellbeing.

Are we asking the right questions? How do we know that “worthwhileness” is more important to people in Britain than “meaning” or “control” or “connectedness” - other psychological needs that Dolan et al (ibid) identify?

ONS is currently asking a set of open questions about the meaning of wellbeing on its website and at a variety of events around the country . I would like to think that they will discover what wellbeing means for the Great British public and use this understanding to inform the further questions that they ask. However, the cynic in me suspects that these questions have already been decided as stated in the report above, and the realist suggests that relying on pro-active web responses and attendance at events is not likely to elicit responses truly representative of British society.

Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness, unless you don’t have any

There is extensive evidence to suggest that, after basic needs are met, money (either personal wealth or GDP) is not always one of the key determinants of happiness (Lane 2000; NEF 2009).

However, the phrase “after basic needs are met” is important in this sentence.

We may disagree about what basic needs are, but being able to satisfy these basic needs is likely to improve your subjective wellbeing. This is possibly why many people feel angry when they see the Westminster Government promoting a happiness agenda with one hand and with the other cutting budgets that deprive people of the resources that they need to meet their basic needs.

Happiness is about more than the individual.

Rarely does happiness exist in isolation. Just as my happiness is related to other aspects of my life, it is also related to other people in my life – other people make me happy and my happiness if affected by the happiness of those around me, particularly people that I care about. Similarly, comparison with other people is known to have an impact upon subjective wellbeing.

The ONS recognises this by looking at individual happiness and national happiness. However, in order to genuinely understand subjective wellbeing we need to take this relational aspect of happiness seriously at other levels such as family, friendship groups and community. We need to know how people think about themselves in relation to the other people in their lives and what impact this has on their wellbeing and the complex ways that these issues interplay with other, sometimes competing, important aspects of our lives.

My PhD seeks to answer some of these questions relating to the meaning of subjective wellbeing, but in a very different culture. Next week I head off to Laos, a country characterised by (among many other things) ethnic diversity, Buddhism and communism, where I’ll being doing ethnographic research for the next 15 months.

I’ll be blogging on my quest to understand happiness in Laos. I would be very happy if you would like to follow my adventures.

Christina McMellon

---

[1] In this piece I use the terms ‘subjective wellbeing’ and ‘happiness’ interchangeably. This could be, and has been, endlessly debated, the terminology related to fields such as positive psychology, happiness studies and philosophy have been repeatedly problematised and discussed, but there is not enough space to get into that debate in the posts.

Improving access to justice for victims of domestic abuse

Rhoda Grant MSP found broad support for the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill[1] introduced earlier this year, and although some areas proved to be contentious last Wednesday as it passed the first stage of parliament scrutiny. The bill aims to increase domestic abuse victims’ access to justice and enable police and prosecutors to provide a better response to breached civil protections orders.

MSPs welcomed the proposed change to shift responsibility from the victim to the police to take action when a violent partner breaches a civil protection order. They also welcomed the proposal that would remove the existing ‘course of conduct’ requirement so that a non-harassment order can be granted when evidence of one incident of harassing behaviour is provided rather than evidence of at least two separate incidents. These provisions certainly seem a step forward in improving victims’ access to justice. It makes sense that it is the police and prosecutors responsibility to respond to perpetrators who breach civil protection orders not the responsibility of victims. It also makes sense that victims should not have to suffer repeated harassment before perpetrators are held accountable of their behaviour. It is even more pertinent when we consider that much of domestic abuse takes place behind closed doors out with the gaze of police or other professionals, meaning it can be difficult for victims to provide evidence of a pattern of harassment.

The more contentious elements of the bill relate to how access to civil protection orders should financed and how domestic abuse is defined in the bill. As it stands, victims are responsible for paying legal costs when applying for civil protection orders unless they qualify for Legal Aid. So some victims have to pay for their own protection against domestic abuse. Provisions in the bill aim to redress this by providing Legal Aid without means testing to victims applying for civil protection orders. Meaning victims would have equal access to justice regardless of their financial background and more fundamentally victims of domestic abuse would no longer have to pay for their own safety and protection – surely a step in the right direction? Unfortunately the debate revealed it is not so straightforward. Concerns were raised about the potential cost to the public purse as well as whether such a provision would contravene a defender’s human rights.[2] Both issues are no doubt important and will receive further scrutiny by the Justice Committee. Let’s hope a solution can be reached that both satisfies these concerns and also remedies the current situation where victims of domestic abuse have to pay for their own safety and protection.

Fiona Morrison, PhD student, CRFR
http://www.crfr.ac.uk/crfrphdstudents.html#fm

---

[1] http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/bills/45-DomesticAbuse/index.htm

[2] The bill does not seek to extend non-means testing to Legal Aid to defenders. There are concerns that such a provision would contravene Article 6(1) of the ECHR.

Child Poverty - What about welfare benefits and making work pay?

The key elements of welfare benefits and making work pay appear to be off the table in the discussion about how to eradicate child poverty in the UK. The Scottish Government in its recent consultation paper Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland: A Discussion Paper stated that these were reserved measures and outwith the scope of the Scottish Government. The UK Coalition Government's consultation to inform its child poverty strategy states that 'tackling poverty is not about moving people above an arbitrary income line'.

While the evidence shows that the causes of poverty and disadvantage for people are complex, we know that money does make a difference. We know that low incomes families in Scotland believe that government has a role in addressing low income but have mixed views over the success of government intervention and those of its agents (1). Parents living in deprived areas were more likely than other parents to report low access to services like childcare, health and leisure facilities. Parents living in deprived areas and/or in social housing were also most likely to be dissatisfied with their local facilities (1,2).

Dealing with debt, issues related to long-term unemployment and ensuring access to good services and advice will have a positive effect on families with children. Mothers on low incomes combining paid work and caring for their families sometimes continue working even though it doesn’t pay, suggesting that work itself is important for them. They identify support for the costs of childcare as important but not always sufficient and also suggest that governments need to tackle the problem of making work pay (3).

It is essential that discussion of social security and income are put back on the table for this debate.


(1) CRFR, McKendrick J, Cunningham-Burley S and Backett-Milburn K (2003) Life in low
income families in Scotland: Research report. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive.
(2)Growing Up in Scotland Topic Research Findings No.3/2009 ‘Parenting in
the Neighbourhood Context’ Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
(3) Backet- Milburn K, S Cunningham-Burley and D Kemmer (2001) Caring and providing: Lone
and partnered working mothers in Scotland. Edinburgh: Family Policy Studies Centre and
Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

To see the full CRFR response to Tackling Child Poverty in Scotland: A Discussion Paper see http://www.crfr.ac.uk/reports/Tackling%20child%20poverty.pdf