Resources in later life dissemination papers (July 2010)

CRSP has produced three dissemination papers that bring key issues affecting older people, as they move through later life, into the public domain.  Each paper focuses on a specific policy area:

- Managing finances;
- Managing housing transitions;
- Transport and getting around in later life.

These papers highlight the impact of change on older people and how they manage that change.  The papers arise from a long-term research project ‘Planning and Deploying Resources in Later Life’ (RILL).  This project, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, explored older people’s changing needs and resources as they move through later life. 

The full report (Hill et al., 2009) is available to download from www.jrf.org.uk/publications/managing-resources-later-life

A Minimum Income Standard (MIS) for the UK: Launch (July 2010)

It is getting harder for people on low incomes to meet a minimum standard of living, according to new research published today (6 July) by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).

Please visit the Minimum Income Standard website for details about the programme

Personalised MIS budgets can be tailored using the Minimum Income Calculator: www.minimumincome.org.uk

Credit and Debt in Low-income Families (June 2010)

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation publishes the Credit and Debt in Low-income Families report.

Increases to the National Minimum Wage just announced by the Government and the Low Pay Commission are not nearly enough to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for low earners according to research conducted by Loughborough University.

Experts at Loughborough’s Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) have calculated a ‘living wage’ based on what people need to be able to buy the essentials of modern life.

According to this latest research, which uses public views about what is an acceptable minimum standard of living, workers need to earn at least £7.14 an hour in order to make ends meet.

This means that a rise in the National Minimum Wage from £5.80 to £5.93 an hour, announced in the Budget and confirmed today, is still way off the mark.

full press release

A wage to live in dignity (10th March 2010)
Corporate governance in both public and private sectors will benefit from raising minimum pay

Guardian article, written by Donald Hirsch, Head of Income Studies at CRSP.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/09/higher-minimum-wage-campaign

Four year funding agreement secured to take forward 'A Minimum Income Standard for the UK' research (January 2010)

CRSP has recently received the excellent news that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Trustees have agreed to fund research on A Minimum Income Standard for the UK for the next four years. This follows on from our work on a Minimum Income Standard for Britain and more recent research in Northern Ireland (which found that the standard is similar enough across the UK to justify referring to a ‘UK MIS’).

The funding secures two key aspects of our work over the next four years:

• Updating MIS on a regular cycle. We will at least uprate with inflation every year. Every two years, starting in 2010, we will also review whether there is a good case for adding, subtracting or changing selected items in the budgets behind the standards. Our first review will test whether different attitudes in changed economic times create a case for this. Every four years, starting in 2012, we will repeat the original research to ‘rebase’ the standard for some of the household types covered. The 2012 rebase will cover families with children, and we would plan to rebase all other household types covered in 2016.

• Disseminating MIS results and working through their implications with stakeholders, decision-makers and influencers. We are finding a wide range of applications for the standard. At present for example we are working closely with people involved in campaigning for and implementing the Living Wage to explore how MIS can inform arguments about the required wage level.

Our funding also contains an additional element that will allow us to analyse in more detail than we have done so far the rationales that members of the public use in specifying minimum needs, and how if at all they are changing. After our 2012 study, we will be producing a report on this qualitative evidence gathered from the research we have done so far.

We look forward to developing and disseminating this worthwhile project.

The MIS Team
Donald Hirsch, Noel Smith, Abigail Davis, Nicola Selby and Sharon Walker

MIS website: www.minimumincomestandard.org

Expenses: it's back to basics

Guardian article on MP Expenses by Donald Hirsch, Head of Income Studies

The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report (March 2009)

Lord Laming has published his review of child protection services in England today (Thursday 12th March). As part of this review, the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) and the Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR) were asked to make a contribution based on some of their emerging findings from the first stage of their research on the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the New Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB). Interim findings of this study will be published in spring 2009.

Download the Lord Laming review

BBC news link

Managing Resources in Later Life (February 2009)

Download report

Understanding the Experience of Ethnic Minorities at Loughborough University (February 2009)

Loughborough University commissioned CRSP to undertake a research project into the performance and experiences of ethnic minority students at Loughborough. The University sought to understand whether existing data demonstrated anything about the experience of its applicants and students, and whether ethnic minority students were having less positive experiences at Loughborough than white students. The research approach was both quantitative and qualitative - it drew on existing data available through the University systems and developed a range of focus groups and one-to-one interviews with a wide-range of participants.

Download report

Evaluation of the Right2BCared4 Pilots (January 2009)

The Centre for Child and Family Research (CCFR) and CRSP, along with the National Care Advisory Service (part of Catch 22, formerly Rainer) are collaborating on a major new project funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. They will be evaluating the ‘Right2BCared4’ pilots – which aim to enhance the preparation of, and support provided for, care leavers.

read more

UK Poverty Expert Joins CRSP (October 2008)

CRSP is delighted to welcome UK poverty expert Donald Hirsch to the Centre. Donald is an independent consultant and writer on social policy. He joined CRSP in October on a part-time basis as the Head of Income Studies and will work with Abigail Davis, Noel Smith and the rest of the Minimum Income Standard team to further develop the project.

Donald states, “I’m excited to be joining CRSP, a first-class research centre located in one of the top-rated social science departments in the country, and with great colleagues. My job there will centre on the development of work on minimum income standards, in which I have already been closely involved and in which CRSP is taking a national and international lead, and on developing the Centre’s already strong profile in poverty research, analysis and policy applications.”

Please see Donald’s staff page or personal website, www.donaldhirsch.com, for further information about his work.

The Essentials of Life (October 2008)

As life becomes ever more expensive, experts from CRSP and the University of York have enlisted the help of the general public to identify for the first time the level of income that people need to have an acceptable standard of living today.

read the article in full in 'The View', published by Loughborough University, October 2008.

Sunday Times names Loughborough 'University of the Year' (Sept 2008)

Loughborough University has won the coveted University of the Year title in this year’s Sunday Times University Guide. The accolade is designed to recognise all-round excellence.

It has been awarded to Loughborough in honour of the quality of the University’s teaching and research, its consistent high rankings in the National Student Survey, the University’s unbeaten six Queen’s Anniversary Prizes and its outstanding success in sport.

read more

Themed Section in Social Policy and Society (September 2008)

Following our successful conference ‘A Fairer Society? A Review of Policies for Vulnerable Groups’ in September 2006 we are delighted to announce that a themed section entitled ‘The Poverty of Policy? Gaps in Anti-Poverty Policy for Children and Young People’ in the latest edition of Social Policy and Society (Volume 7, Issue 4) is now available. The themed section has been edited by Dr Line Nyhagen Predelli, Professor Alan France and Research Fellow Chris Dearden.

The section offers a combination of papers from the conference (Bradshaw and Richardson; Smith; Sutton) and papers commissioned specifically to deal with gaps in anti-poverty policy towards children and young people (Lloyd; France; Phung). An overview of some useful sources has also been included (Davis and Sandu).

Further details and abstracts can be found at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=SPS&volumeId=7&issueId=04&iid=2177764#

High Hopes report published by the Department for Work and Pensions

The Department for Work and Pensions published the report High Hopes: Supporting ex-prisoners in their lives after prison, on 9th July 2008. The study offered up a fresh insight into ex-prisoners’ experiences of employment and the difficulties they face when trying to re-settle into the community.

Find out further information on the project and publication.

Minimum Income Standard Launch on 1st July 2008

On 1st July 2008 the MIS team launched its final report in London at Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre at 108 Stamford Street, London. This report is the culmination of two years of research, based on work with 39 focus groups involving more than 200 people, who were actively engaged in shaping the research, in combination with input from experts on heating and nutrition.

The report sets out a series of minimum income standard budgets for 4 household types: single adults, couples with two children, lone parents with one child and couple pensioners. Links to the findings and report are available on the Minimum Income Standard website as are details of some of the budgets, as well as technical papers on comparison data on expenditure, equivalence scales; and plans for uprating and rebasing the budgets in the future.

Minimum Income Standard website

CRSP welcomes Grahame Whitfield, Assistant Director (November 2007)

CRSP welcomes new Assistant Director Grahame Whitfield.

CRSP secures LSC Framework (31st October 2007)

CRSP joins CWDC Approved List of Consultants (18th September 2007)

We are delighted to announced that CRSP have been accepted on the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) Approved List of Consultants.

CWDC exists to improve the lives of children, young people, their families and carers by ensuring that all people working with them have the best possible training, qualifications, support and advice. It also helps children and young people's organisations and services to work together better so that the child is at the centre of all services.

New Publications (September 2007)

A Child's-Eye View of Social Difference was published by the JRF on 7th September 2007.

Find out more

The Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology
Allen Austin Bartholomew Award 2007

CRSP is delighted to announce that Professor Alan France, Director of CRSP and Professor Ross Homel from the Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, have been awarded the annual Allen Austin Bartholomew Award for the best academic paper to appear in the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (2006), Vol. 39.

The paper, entitled 'Societal Access Routes and Developmental Pathways: Putting Social Structure and Young People's Voices Into the Analysis of Pathways Into and Out of Crime', explored the relationship between social context and youth offending highlighting the importance of listening to what young people have to tell us about their experiences of crime. The article is available from the journal and has also been published in their new book, Pathways and Crime Prevention.

References
France, A. and Homel, R. (2006) Societal Access Routes and Developmental Pathways: Putting Social Structure and Young People's Voices Into the Analysis of Pathways Into and Out of Crime. Australian New Zealand Journal of Criminology Vol. 39.

France, A. and Homel, R. (2007) (edited collection) Pathways and Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice. Willan Publishers.

Publications (June 2007)

Severe Child Poverty in the UK
A Review of Poverty Dynamics in the UK
Evidence Base Review on Mobility

Children's Commissioner gives prestigious lecture at Loughborough University (May 2007)

England’s Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, gave a guest lecture at Loughborough University on Wednesday 23 May 2007.

The lecture, entitled ‘Children, Young People and Childhood Today – Perspectives from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’, celebrated the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education given to the University in 2005 for evaluating and helping to develop social policy related programmes.

CRSP’s research was at the heart of the Queen's Anniversary Prize submission.

Prior to his lecture, Sir Al attended a seminar with the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough. The seminar included presentations from CRSP by:

• Professor Alan France, with colleagues from the Midlands Centre for Criminology & Criminal Justice, Department of Social Sciences, presented on Socially Excluded Children and Young People as ‘Other’: criminalisation, antisocial behaviour and asylum seeking children and young people.

• Sue Middleton and Noel Smith presented on Poverty in Childhood: Research and Policy.

Loughborough wins fifth Queen's Anniversary Prize (November 2005)

Loughborough University has been awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education 2004. It is the fifth time the University has captured one of the prestigious awards - an achievement equalled only by Oxford.

Find out more