City strategy : final evaluation

The City Strategy (CS) concept was first announced in the 2006 Welfare Reform Green Paper – A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work. CS was designed at a time of growth in the national economy to combat enduring pockets of entrenched worklessness and poverty in urban areas by empowering local institutions to come together in partnerships to develop locally sensitive solutions. It was premised on the idea that developing a better understanding of the local welfare to work arena would allow partnerships to align and pool funding and resources to reduce duplication of services and fill gaps in provision. The ‘theory of change’ underlying CS suggested that such an approach would result in more coordinated services which would be able to generate extra positive outcomes in terms of getting people into jobs and sustaining them in employment over and above existing provision. CS was initially set to run for two years from April 2007 to March 2009 in 15 CS Pathfinder (CSP) areas, varying in size from five wards in one town through single local authority areas to subregional groupings of multiple local authority areas, across Great Britain. In July 2008, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced an extension for a further two years to March 2011. In April 2009, two local areas in Wales, which were in receipt of monies from the Deprived Areas Fund (DAF), were invited by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to form local partnerships with a similar remit to the CSPs, albeit more limited in scope – to develop locally sensitive solutions to economic inactivity, to the CSPs. During the period that the CS initiative was operational, economic conditions changed markedly with a severe recession, followed by fragile recovery. The CSPs had to cope with ongoing changes in policy throughout the lifetime of the CS initiative, including a General Election and a new Coalition Government at Westminster early in the fourth year. While policy changes are a fact of life for local practitioners operating in the welfare to work arena, the global recession in 2008/09 marked a fundamental change in the context in which local partnerships operated

Socially Responsible Investment and International Development: A Guide For Trustees and Fund Managers

This toolkit aims to help UK pension scheme trustees understand more about SRI and how they might integrate SRI into their scheme's long term investment strategy. The toolkit provides trustees with: best practice first steps for different types of pension scheme; potential next steps; and 'how to do it' guides on SRI, ranging from developing high level policy to fund manager selection and assessment. Additional on line resources are included

Duncan Green: Book Review – Alex de Waal, “The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa”

There’s a balance to be struck in writing any non-fiction book. Narrative v information. How often do you return to de Waal coverthe overarching storyline, the message of the book, the thing you want the reader to take away? How much information – facts, names, dates, events – do you include? Too much storyline, and the book feels flimsy. Too much information and the reader gets lost in the detail

Conference rage: how did something as truly awful as paneldiscussions become the default format?

The relatively low impact of many academic conferences suggests it may be time for a rethink, argues Duncan Green. ‘Manels’ (male only panels) are an outrage, but why not go for complete abolition, rather than mere gender balance? With people reading out papers, terrible powerpoints crammed with too many words, or illegible graphics, it is time for innovation in format. We need to get better at shaping the format to fit the the precise purpose of the conference

An experiment in participatory blogging on Ebola in Sierra Leone

Duncan Green unveils unveils how CPAID researchers collaborated with their interviewees to produce showcasing their experiences during the Ebola epidemic

What difference do remittances and migration make back home? Duncan Green selects from the Economist

Reading the Economist cover to cover is an illicit pleasure – it may be irritatingly smug and right wing, especially on anything about economic policy, but its coverage on international issues consistently goes way beyond standard news outlets

How can INGOs get better? Duncan Green’s ‘surprisingly interesting’ conversation with finance directors

Spent an afternoon with a bunch of NGO Finance Directors this week. I was presenting Fit for the Future (memo to self, never write another paper about the future of INGOs – their thirst for navel-gazing is limitless)

Want to ensure your research influences policy? Advice from a government insider

Among the ways social sciences research can have impact is by influencing public policy. Duncan Green recently attended an event at which this subject was much discussed, with a leading government research analyst offering clear advice on what officials are looking for. Comparative work highlighting a range of possible solutions is valued, as are multidisciplinary approaches. Most useful is demonstrating where something has or hasn’t worked and why. Make written work short but not dumb, avoid jargon, and quickly get to the point. Beyond that, a researcher’s attitude, accessibility, and understanding of the rhythms of policy decision-making are all important