Representing the Change: Rules of Engagement

Drawing on practice rooted in regeneration contexts with a focus on housing and development, this lab aims to reveal the challenging situations artists find themselves in when managing complex projects. When under pressure to demonstrate impact, notions of success for artists working in precarious contexts can be difficult to define. In this lab delegates are invited to unpick the rhetoric and image of ‘successful’ community based arts programming and explore alternative criteria for reviewing practice. The lab will aim to create a space for truthful, supported exchange around a need for transparency in the ways that artists are working in order to demand greater support for the practice. Guest artists Rebecca Davies and Dan Russell will join Anna Francis in facilitating the lab. The lab was delivered as part of The Social Art Summit. 'An Artist-Led Review of Socially Engaged Arts Practice in the UK & beyond. Convened by Social Art Network, Sheffield. Over two-days artists from around the country will come together to share practice, showcase work and explore what it means to be making art through social engagement right now. Artists, activists, community groups, curators, students, academics, funders and sectors working in the social realm are invited to join the conversation through a series of events at Site Gallery and other venues around the city. Through building a network, showcasing practice and expanding dialogue the Summit will develop agency in the field of art and social practice and test the ground for launching a Social Art Biennale in 2020. International guests include Black Quantum Futurism and Interference Archive.

Darlington Change Project: Devolved Budgets. Interim report.

Darlington Borough Council is devolving budgets to frontline social workers and managers, giving individual teams the power to identify and test creative solutions aiming to safely prevent children and young people from entering care. Families where children are at risk of imminently requiring a care order will be identified by a team manager. 30-50 of these families will then be randomly selected to have a budget of up to £10,000 allocated to them, and held by their social worker. Where possible, these budgets will be equally spread over three age cohorts: families with a child aged 0-4, 5-9 and 10-16 years old. Social workers will be encouraged to be creative with their support to families. Budgets are suggested to be used for a range of purposes such as: academic support, financial support for the home, financial support for out of school activities, support for any extended family, access to external specialist therapy, and help to widen the reach of Family Group Conferencing. The qualitative evaluation aims to help us better understand how the budgets are used and implemented, the potential mechanisms of impact, and contextual factors. This will involve collecting data from interviews, observations, focus groups and questionnaires conducted with social workers, as well as families who receive a budget. Randomised allocation of budgets will be piloted in Darlington and an exploratory analysis of administrative data, including information about statutory care, will be conducted to compare the differences between families receiving, or not receiving the budgets. The evaluation of the programme began in Spring 2019, and ran until March 2020

Translation into English of Foreign Social Science Monographs.

Title does not appear on t.-p.Mode of access: Internet."Published by the State department of social welfare and the Department of social science, Columbia university as a report on Project... of the Works progress administration.

Devolved budgets: an evaluation of pilots in three local authorities in England.

This evaluation explored how ‘devolved budgets’ might be used by Children’s Social Care to provide resources to families and reduce the need for care. A devolved budget is a financial resource that is made available to social workers to spend with families. The idea is that social workers and families are best placed to know what help is needed to make sustainable changes and keep children safely at home. Pilots in Hillingdon, Darlington and Wigan offer insights about different approaches to implementing devolved budgets. Hillingdon used the funds to help adolescents, mainly those at risk of extra-familial harms related to various forms of exploitation. Darlington worked with families with children who were at risk of care entry. Wigan used devolved budgets with families where the goal was reunification from care, and families where children were at high risk of entering care. Decision-making about expenditure was devolved to frontline social workers to some extent in all three pilots

Factors Facilitating Construction Industry Development

This paper reports on a study aimed at identifying the key factors associated with construction industry development worldwide, by using a grounded theory approach. This involved, firstly, the identification of 62 variables from earlier studies. A questionnaire survey was then used to elicit views of the current strength of each variable. The resulting data were factor analysed and a set of eight key factors obtained comprising: (1) Industry-led better practice and culture; (2) Financial resources and investor confidence; (3) Human skills and culture of transparency; (4) Government policies and strategies supporting construction business; (5) Research and Development for construction; (6) Self-reliant construction culture; (7) Institutional support; and (8) Supportive attitudes from Aid agencies. These appear to be relevant to both developed and developing countries