Incorporating family voices in the planning and delivery of parenting support

The project will explore how parents' and children's voices can be incorporated into the planning and delivery of parenting support services. These voices are currently marginalised by the dominant evidence-based paradigm in early years services, which favours quantitative metrics of outcomes. Yet these voices have considerable potential to inform improvements to the commissioning, design and delivery of services, to help better meet the needs of vulnerable families. Working closely with the family support charity Home Start Oldham, Stockport and Tameside (HOST), the student will carry out collaborative ethnographic research to: (i) examine how HOST is currently using family voices to inform its services; (ii) explore how HOST's practices in this area could be improved, both in its everyday work and in its strategic planning; and (iii) consider how this work with HOST might be used to inform early years strategies more widely, both regionally through the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and nationally through Home Start's UK network. A set of carefully designed impact activities will help to achieve these aims.
The project will contribute to the pathway's work around birth to early childhood, specifically its concerns for issues of social justice, reducing gaps in outcomes for disadvantaged groups, and supporting children's social and emotional development, all of which are key aims of HOST's work with families. The use of collaborative and co-production methods align with the pathway's support for innovative methods. HOST's work primarily involves supporting parents, but the ultimate aim of this work is to improve the lives of children, hence the choice of this pathway rather than Wellbeing, Health and Communities.
The project will further the pathway's commitment to interdisciplinarity by drawing on concepts and methods relating to voice from multiple fields, including: work on participation in childhood studies and disability studies; research on user engagement in social work; debates around patient experiences and co-design of services in healthcare research; and critical thinking about voice in the qualitative and post-qualitative methods literature. The supervision team is also interdisciplinary: Dr. Gallagher has expertise in children's geographies and childhood studies, while Prof James has a background in psychology and speech and language development, so the project will work across the common division in childhood studies between psychological and sociological approaches. The student will be immersed in this interdisciplinary mix throughout the project.