May's Reading List

This blog post by Allison Williams from the Wyman Center discusses how addressing inequity and social justice can advance socio-emotional learning for young people. Having recently convened practitioners, evaluators, and funders to discuss socio-emotional learning and launch their field guide, ‘Preparing Youth to Thrive’, the blog presents findings from the Social Emotional Learning Challenge, a collaboration of eight youth-focused programmes to identify best practice to provide young people with valuable social-emotional skills. Williams notes that staff experiences in the SEL Challenge demonstrated that promoting equity is integral to helping young people build empathy skills. SEL Challenge participants defined empathy as “relating to others with acceptance, understanding and sensitivity to their diverse perspectives and experiences.” Williams found that empathy was developed best when adults created engaging learning environments where young people had the opportunities to practice relating to one another with acceptance and understanding, as well as creating safe and empowering spaces for young people to share different cultural backgrounds, personal beliefs, and stories without judgment. – Zunaira, Research and Projects Assistant 

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I’m always thoughtful after reading reflections from Heather Krause (We All Count) on the specificity of language in learning and evaluation activities. In this latest blog, Krause looks at how privilege can be deeply embedded in our units of analysis (the ‘thing’ that frames what is being looked or measured at in a research study), especially when we are looking at descriptive data questions and trying to describe a ‘typical’ or ‘average’ rate of something. The blog explores how we often give attention to the numerator (e.g. what is ‘low’ or ‘average’ water usage per neighbourhood) but how a definition for the denominator (the bit that comes after per, e.g. the ‘neighbourhood’) is often just accepted with little consideration. This acceptance can perpetuate a particular norm or perspective and can therefore reinforce existing inequities. Using this example of water usage rates, Krause asks ‘what defines a neighborhood and why is that our unit of measurement?’ and ‘who is privileged by our choice of unit?’, exploring what happens to the data when the denominator is changed from ‘per neighborhood’ to ‘per person’ to ‘per household.’ It’s a short article that is packed full of prompts for us to consider when reflecting on the language we use, assume, or accept when designing new data projects. It leaves me wondering - how do we go about building in time, structure, and accountability for these conversations and decisions? – Catherine, Organisational Learning Lead 

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In this article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nancy M.P. Bocken & Thijs H.J. Geradts highlight the potential of circular economy model strategies to foster positive environmental outcomes. Bocken and Geradts make a clear distinction between the linear economy – where products are used (often once) and then discarded, and the circular economy, a model within which recycling, upcycling and regeneration are at the centre. Their arguments focus particularly on the potential for corporations to utilise these models, become more sustainable, and to increase profit. They present four models in particular: narrowing resource loops; slowing resource loops; closing resource loops; regenerating resource loops. Exploring how corporations can implement these four strategies, Bocken and Geradts create a roadmap for corporations and a snapshot of the current initiatives and practices at the intersection of corporate strategies and circular economy. – Soizic, Enterprise Development Manager 

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This literature review, written by Centric in partnership with Impact on Urban Health, explores the vast range of ethical, practical and cultural considerations associated with community research in the context of health. The findings speak to the importance of designing and applying equitable research approaches that directly benefit communities, and thus exploring how those with lived experience can participate and, in many cases, lead on research. Of particular interest is the dichotomy between a ‘community researcher’ (i.e. someone who is already a longstanding member of the community, though not necessarily skilled in research methodologies) and a ‘professional researcher’ (potentially the opposite). There are clear advantages and disadvantages for engaging both in tandem, and I find the suggested ‘inbetweener’ approach for remedying some of the concerns associated with using community researchers particularly interesting; allowing community researchers to become both an insider and outsider to the issues they are exploring. This review is a valuable resource for anyone interested in community research, peer research or participatory research, and how, as ‘professional researchers’, we can reflect on how we take up space and purposefully and authentically ‘extract information’ from a community with an aim to improve outcomes. – Hannah, Research and Evaluation Lead 

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This research article examines the role of different psychosocial resource factors in mitigating the vulnerability to mental distress among disadvantaged young people. The ‘stress process model’ proposes that differences in young people's health and wellbeing correspond to differences in their socio-economic status through exposure to different demands and social stressors. Research data was drawn from a nationally representative longitudinal sample of 16–25 year-olds, who participated in the Youth Economic Activity and Health online survey conducted in the UK between February and October 2021.  

The research found that socio-economic inequalities create various experiences of financial strain, and in turn, the development or maintenance of psychosocial resources, such as social support, optimism or self-efficacy, needed to cope with the adverse situation, impacting finally on mental distress. From these findings, I interpret the clear and immediate need for society to reduce socio-economic inequalities. Until that time, this paper further reinforces the Centre’s focus on both equity and socio-emotional skills. The authors state the importance of provision that enables positive psychosocial resources for young people, their families, and communities in order to limit the negative effect of socio-economic inequalities. The research also found psychosocial effects tended to reinforce one another. For example, social support can boost the development of optimism and self-regulation even in the face of socio-economic adversity. – Kaz, Director of Strategy and Learning 

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Published in response to Scotland’s latest Child Poverty Delivery Plan, this blog by Children and Young People’s Justice reflects on why it’s more important than ever to break the link between deprivation and offending behaviour amongst young people. The author argues that deprivation and inequality are forms of adversity that can lead to a range of negative outcomes for young people, and how current issues – such as financial and social repercussions of COVID-19 and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis – are likely to exacerbate levels of deprivation, increasing the risk of children and young people coming into contact with the law. The blog calls for interventive methods to reduce risk of offending, including investment in deprived communities and decriminalisation of minor offences, in turn reducing the detrimental effect this can have on future outcomes for young people, including health, education, and citizenship. – Hannah, Communications Manager  

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This blog from the Center for Effective Philanthropy shares some interesting insights into data collected on if, and how, Foundations encourage and support their grantees to listen to the communities they work with/in. This blog gives a refreshing take on a conversation that is so often focused solely at grantee level. It draws the mind deeper to consider what supporting structures might need to be in place to encourage grantees to develop their listening practice. Learning from The Listening Fund has told us that listening meaningfully can be extremely challenging for organisations, and that building dedicated time and capacity for this into funding opportunities is important to drive this work. The blog shows that the top capacity-building support that surveyed Foundations offered their grantees was funding for listening activity. This in encouraging, as it demonstrates a genuine commitment to supporting listening practices and an acknowledgement that it often requires additional resourcing. An interesting read for anyone involved in grant-making to reflect on their own processes of supporting grantees to listen to the communities they seek to engage and support. – Jo, Project Manager 

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On 4 May 2022, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner launched a government-commissioned Family Review, an independent review into family life. The Review will use quantitative and qualitative research to understand children and families’ perspectives on the support they are offered by community, public and voluntary services. It will explore whether public services understand the needs of families as a unit, rather than as a collection of individuals. The Review will also seek to understand whether the needs of children within families are understood in the provision of services to families, to investigate how we can improve children’s outcomes by improving the way public services understand the needs of families. Throughout the review, children and young people will have the opportunity to directly contribute by answering a short series of questions, accessed via the link above. The Review has also launched a wider Call for Evidence on all aspects of family life, relationships, support structures, and the pressures facing families. The Call for Evidence will run for the next six weeks. – Steve, Head of Partnerships 

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The Rethinking Impact, Evaluation and Accountability research project, supported by ESRC and led by Dr Tania de St Croix and Louise Doherty at King’s College London, has very recently published two new resources for funders, policy makers and youth workers. From the briefing on Valuing Youth Work, I took two particularly important messages: youth work should not be burdened with accountability for outcomes over which it has no direct control, and skilled, committed youth workers are youth work’s most important resource. The accompanying practical resources offer youth workers insight and guidance on embedding evaluative questions and reflection into their work with young people. - Bethia, CEO