This paper summarises the evidence on what we know, and are still yet to
learn, about place-based approaches to improve children’s outcomes. Over 12 months, the project investigated the Australian place-based landscape to understand how they could better promote children’s wellbeing through place-based initiatives. There is also a nice and quick history of place-based approaches from an international perspective. The paper is called The evidence: what we know about place-based approaches to support children’s wellbeing.
Category: Evidence
Participle – Learning from the London Circle
Participle ran an innovation project that started with older people themselves, that would include the abundance of experience and wealth and would ask how this could be shared in order to grow a new approach for all, rooted in prevention and the fostering of capabilities. Southwark Council, Sky media and the Department for Work and Pensions funded the open innovation. They worked with over 250 people in Southwark, South London to develop some answers.
The links to the full report and other details are here.
Animating Assets and action research
The Glasgow Centre for Population Health worked in partnership with the Scottish Community Development Centre to test asset based approaches to improving community health and wellbeing.
Animating Assets’ was a collaborative piece of action research. Action research involves researchers working alongside people for everyone to try out, develop and learn from different ways of doing things. There is a strong congruence between asset-based approaches and action research; action research is appreciative in that it recognises strengths and assets as a starting point for inquiry and builds and embeds resilience and capacity through the process of research itself. We are trying to incorporate the values of assets based approaches and action research into our project at Iriss. See the full report from their work here.
What Works Scotland – Place-based partnering
Iriss are a national partner with What Works Scotland. WWS is an initiative with the aim of improving the way local areas in Scotland use evidence to make decisions about public service development and reform. They are working with specific Community Planning Partnerships involved in the design and delivery of public services. Involved are a whole range of partners and there is a very much place-based approach, as they focus on four specific case study areas – you can find out more about these here.
Collaboration Readiness: Why it matters, how to build it, and where to start
Collaborate has been developing projects to understand the linkages between creative thinking, systemic culture change and front-end delivery, and the role that cross-sector collaboration can play in supporting them. In October 2015 they published a report outlining a lot of their thinking and findings. Key to this was:
“Only 13% of UK citizens surveyed by Ipsos MORI for Collaborate feel a stake in shaping the public services they receive. The report includes more brand new citizen survey data that shows the need for much greater cross-agency collaboration at a local and national level.”
This connected with us around how we feel a wide range of people should be co-creators and designers of services, right from the very start, and we want to insert this approach into the heart of our project.
Promise Neighborhoods Initiative
The Promise Neighborhoods Initiative is a programme that supports community-driven, place-based efforts to improve educational and developmental outcomes for children in distressed communities in the US. There is a strong use of a community of practice approach that really resonated with the Iriss thoughts around the connections that are needed to make a difference in an area and to different groups of people.
See more about the initiative here.
Place-based approaches and the NHS
This paper by the Kings Fund links what the Total Place approach has meant for the NHS in England. It has a very service design feel and some lessons from particular areas. This summarises a conference held in 2010 and outlines some or the potential challenges that the NHS will be facing, some of the policy drivers, and also why a place-based approach could be appropriate in the future of health and social care.
Evaluation of Place-Based Approaches – Canada
This evaluation gives a very good overview of place-based approaches and a whole range of strengths, weaknesses and potential that this approach has. You can click for the full text version or the pdf version.
Lecture on place-based reform
This lecture was delivered by Professor Frank Oberklaid who is sharing his experiences in Australia as Director for the Centre for Community Child Health at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. His work is focused on the application of science to policies on children’s health and development, directed towards influencing the way in which communities and public systems can collaborate to produce better child outcomes.
It’s quite a complex presentation but there is a slideshow as well that breaks down some issues connecting communities and services.
JRF work in Bradford
In 2004, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) made a ten-year commitment to work in Bradford, acting in partnership with others in the city. This report talks about some of the learning from that period of work and we have used it to plug in to our thinkin gof how to work effectively in place-based way. See here for the full details.