Home space? Public and private in new welfare settings
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Health & Social Care
Abstract
The proposed seminar series will explore feelings of 'home' and 'belonging' when using public services, in spaces including childcare settings, hospitals and sites of care for older people, at a time of significant change to such services. Through focusing on ideas of 'home spaces' and 'homeliness' the seminars will ask wider questions about public and private lives within the spaces. Specifically the series will ask who 'feels at home' or not in these spaces and how they are experienced by users and workers. It will develop a new framework for understanding institutional, semi-institutional and domestic spaces in relation to service provision. A particular set of issues will be the context of sweeping change and cuts to the UK welfare state at the present moment, which potentially affects different groups in different ways.
The seminars draw on a variety of ways of thinking about home and public and private lives, including feminist theory which has often seen homes as places of repression, and among social policy-makers, who often have aspirational models of home and domestic life in mind when designing policies. This suggests that 'home spaces' have contradictory qualities and that what might feel 'homely' for one group excludes others. The seminars also draw on new approaches to researching spaces within institutions, for example using visual media and understanding sensory and emotional aspects. Existing research in this area has focused only on one particular kind of space, for example childminders' homes or housing for older people, and therefore this proposal is highly innovative in bringing together researchers and workers concerned with different kinds of public service spaces, used by different groups at different stages of life. In considering the spaces together the seminars will ask how far experiences of feeling at home are changing overall within public service provision, and what is different across areas.
The seminars bring together researchers from different disciplines, policy makers and practitioners in order to develop new insights, create new connections and develop new research agendas. Five events will be held: the first one will set out theoretical frameworks around homeliness and home spaces, the second will look at home spaces in relation to policy agendas and programmes, the third will will look at spaces of 'care' at different stages of the lifecourse, the fourth will examine research methods and the final one will reflect on new research agendas and issues for practitioners looking forward.
Findings from the seminars will be disseminated to diverse groups of other researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, via a range of publications, an interactive website and a summary pamphlet.
The seminars draw on a variety of ways of thinking about home and public and private lives, including feminist theory which has often seen homes as places of repression, and among social policy-makers, who often have aspirational models of home and domestic life in mind when designing policies. This suggests that 'home spaces' have contradictory qualities and that what might feel 'homely' for one group excludes others. The seminars also draw on new approaches to researching spaces within institutions, for example using visual media and understanding sensory and emotional aspects. Existing research in this area has focused only on one particular kind of space, for example childminders' homes or housing for older people, and therefore this proposal is highly innovative in bringing together researchers and workers concerned with different kinds of public service spaces, used by different groups at different stages of life. In considering the spaces together the seminars will ask how far experiences of feeling at home are changing overall within public service provision, and what is different across areas.
The seminars bring together researchers from different disciplines, policy makers and practitioners in order to develop new insights, create new connections and develop new research agendas. Five events will be held: the first one will set out theoretical frameworks around homeliness and home spaces, the second will look at home spaces in relation to policy agendas and programmes, the third will will look at spaces of 'care' at different stages of the lifecourse, the fourth will examine research methods and the final one will reflect on new research agendas and issues for practitioners looking forward.
Findings from the seminars will be disseminated to diverse groups of other researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, via a range of publications, an interactive website and a summary pamphlet.
Planned Impact
The seminars will engage the following groups; the policy community including civil servants and those working in think tanks; voluntary sector workers especially those working for advocacy organisations around different users of services; a range of public sector workers including those working in health, education and social care; and art and design practitioners. The seminars will also benefit early career academic participants in terms of skills and career development.
Engaging with the seminars will lead users to reflect usefully on their own experiences, and gain new ideas for professional practice. In particular we will:
- generate dialogue around the different ways in which groups of service users and workers feel included or excluded by spaces of service provision, and how design and practice can contribute to these feelings;
- explore new ways for practitioners to understand the perspectives of users of spaces through methods that can be integrated into evaluation and development activities within different service delivery settings;
- and invite critical reflections on the overall directions of travel within policy and public service reform and governance, and how that impacts on experiences within concrete settings
These impacts will be achieved through publicity and outreach with target organisations in order to encourage attendance, for which we will receive support from New Economics Foundation, a major UK social policy think-tank, and the Centre for Studies of Home, a new partnership between Queen Mary and the Geffrye Museum of the Home (see Letters of Support). Other organisations to target include Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Age UK, the National Children's Bureau and the Design Council. We will then ensure active participation and representation from non-academic groups via the programming of the seminars, including having non-academic speakers and designing the events to be accessible and engaging including 'case study' examples from research and practice involving visual and multi media material. We will also support sustained discussion and partnership building over time, via communications and opportunities for networking within the events, which we forsee as leading to new research collaboraions. We will disseminate findings from the events to a wide group of non-academic users. Specific techniques for doing this include: a seminar series website where summaries of discussion and presentation material will be posted, and opportunities for discussion will be available; establishing a database of contacts from user-groups; and producing an acessible four-page summary booklet to be mailed to network of a wider contacts afterwards, pulling out the key learning points. Again we will be supported in this through New Economics Foundation and our extensive network of policy and practitioner contacts.
Additionally, any peer-reviewed publications arising from this grant will be registered on the Open University's open access institutional repository - Open Research Online (ORO) at http://oro.open.ac.uk. ORO is now one of the largest repositories in the UK. The site receives an average of 32,000 visitors per month from 188 different countries and has received over 1.4 million visitors since 2006. It enables access to research outputs via common search engines including Google, by using the OAI (Open Archives Initiative) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
Engaging with the seminars will lead users to reflect usefully on their own experiences, and gain new ideas for professional practice. In particular we will:
- generate dialogue around the different ways in which groups of service users and workers feel included or excluded by spaces of service provision, and how design and practice can contribute to these feelings;
- explore new ways for practitioners to understand the perspectives of users of spaces through methods that can be integrated into evaluation and development activities within different service delivery settings;
- and invite critical reflections on the overall directions of travel within policy and public service reform and governance, and how that impacts on experiences within concrete settings
These impacts will be achieved through publicity and outreach with target organisations in order to encourage attendance, for which we will receive support from New Economics Foundation, a major UK social policy think-tank, and the Centre for Studies of Home, a new partnership between Queen Mary and the Geffrye Museum of the Home (see Letters of Support). Other organisations to target include Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Age UK, the National Children's Bureau and the Design Council. We will then ensure active participation and representation from non-academic groups via the programming of the seminars, including having non-academic speakers and designing the events to be accessible and engaging including 'case study' examples from research and practice involving visual and multi media material. We will also support sustained discussion and partnership building over time, via communications and opportunities for networking within the events, which we forsee as leading to new research collaboraions. We will disseminate findings from the events to a wide group of non-academic users. Specific techniques for doing this include: a seminar series website where summaries of discussion and presentation material will be posted, and opportunities for discussion will be available; establishing a database of contacts from user-groups; and producing an acessible four-page summary booklet to be mailed to network of a wider contacts afterwards, pulling out the key learning points. Again we will be supported in this through New Economics Foundation and our extensive network of policy and practitioner contacts.
Additionally, any peer-reviewed publications arising from this grant will be registered on the Open University's open access institutional repository - Open Research Online (ORO) at http://oro.open.ac.uk. ORO is now one of the largest repositories in the UK. The site receives an average of 32,000 visitors per month from 188 different countries and has received over 1.4 million visitors since 2006. It enables access to research outputs via common search engines including Google, by using the OAI (Open Archives Initiative) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
Organisations
Publications
Clark, A
(2014)
'Sense of Place in residential care homes-perceptions of home?'
in Scottish Journal of Residential Childcare
Jupp, Eleanor
The New Politics of Home: themed edition, for publication 2016, including introductory paper and six papers arising from series
in Critical Social Policy
Peace, S
The Handbook of Cultural Gerontology
| Title | Research in the Making |
| Description | This was a piece of collaborative digital visual and audio art made at the Home Spaces methods workshop on Friday 16 May 2014. Two artists, Suzi Arnott and Crispin Hughes, photographed significant objects and images brought along by researchers attending the event. They also interviewed them about the significance of the images or objects. These images and audio clips were then edited to create an interactive artwork, to be presented at the final seminar event and available on the project website. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Impact | It is intended that the artwork stimulates new thinking about the place of images and objects in research: it has not yet reached a wide enough audience to enable this yet |
| Description | 1. Provided new knowledge and avenues for further research around issues of care, home and welfare: The five seminars in the series highlighted ways in which 'home' has become a key site of contemporary politics. Such a politics concerns both changing patterns of care brought about by welfare changes, and the material politics of housing. In relation to care, a key finding has been that, in a context of austerity, many of the institutional spaces in which services would traditionally be delivered are being reduced or shut down and are now being delivered in domestic settings themselves as well as via forms of collective and community-based support. Presentations from researchers and practitioners within the series have included those working on health and care within houses (eg Home Share schemes), within co-housing and co-design models (eg for older people), using forms of volunteering, activism and peer support (eg Home Start) and via paradigms of 'co-production' and 'personalisation'. Such innovations present opportunities for more personalised and responsive services, yet they may be driven primarily by loss of resources and be more fragmented and unequal, especially in relation to gender, than previous provision. There is a need for research that holds up these new landscapes of care to critical scrutiny, and explores the changing identities and relationships within them. A second key issue has been around housing itself. The crisis of affordability in parts of the UK means that a secure home that enables access to family, community and public services is now increasingly difficult. This shifts the politics of 'home' in relation to welfare in material ways. These issues are being taken forward through a high profile special journal issue drawing on papers from the series for Social Politics on 'The New Politics of Home' (eds Jupp, Newman, Franklin) as well as a grant proposal 'Women Making Change in Communities' (PI Jupp, CI Newman) exploring women as community activists in marginalised communities, currently being considered by ESRC. 2. Developed new methodological resources: The seminars explored visual, multi-sensory and participatory methods, especially via an early career Methods Workshop held in May 2014. This focused on using visual and material culture as both method and research focus, and resulted in an online digital resource (see http://www.homespaceseminars.org/research-in-the-making.html) by artists Susi Arnott and Crispin Hughes, which was also exhibited at the final event in November 2014. A number of attendees from the workshop reported changes in their methodological approach following the workshop. A special journal issue of papers from the series on this topic is also under development, as well as a monograph by Clark on material cultures of research. 3. Shaped multi-disciplinary collaboration: the seminar series brought together researchers and practitioners from across social policy, geography, gerontology, education and childhood studies, sociology, history, art history, health services and more. Ten delegates attended three or more events over the two years, and a number reported making significant new connections for their own research. The interdisciplinary team of seminar convenors will continue to collaborate on both publications and empirical research. |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings on the shifting nature of welfare services and therefore shifting experiences and understandings of home will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working on issues of health and social care, housing and social policy, especially in assessing issues of equality, power and inclusion/exclusion within contemporary service delivery. Non-academic speakers and attendees have been present at each event. As well as academic outputs outlined, the project website, publicised via social media, has provided accessible summaries of each event. Further policy and practitioner orientated outputs on this topic are currently being developed by Jupp. The two special issues discussed above, as well as further publications based on papers given at the seminar series will enable academic audiences to access these findings. In relation to methods, the project has developed a digital artwork/resource which we intend to be used by researchers working in this field. Overall we intend for the seminar series to shape new research and critical reflection on issues of care, the home and welfare at the current time for both researchers and practitioners. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | http://www.homespaceseminars.org/ |
| Description | 1) Developed new knowledge around issues of care, home, gender, welfare and community activism, issues which speak directly to contemporary debates in social policy. The five events in the series highlighted ways in which 'home' has become a key site of contemporary politics in the UK. These politics concern both changing patterns of care brought about by welfare changes, and material questions of housing, as well as how austerity is shaping new forms of activism and volunteering centred around the home and housing. This knowledge has been communicated via accessible summaries on our project website (www.homespaceseminars.org), which we have publicised via social media and extensive online networks. In order to further develop this knowledge, a number of the partners involved developed a research project proposal during 2014-15, on women and activism within austerity, informed by insights arising from the seminars around new forms of home centred organising and activism. The proposal was developed by Dr Eleanor Jupp, Prof Janet Newman (the PI and CI) and Dr Catherine Durose, working with Renaisi Social Enterprise, a community based film-maker and also a number of voluntary sector organisations and charities, who had been engaged with the seminar series, including a network of housing activists who presented at the final event in December 2014. A small pilot research project was undertaken in 2014, which involved research with a group of women employed by Renaisi, the report from which contributed to how Renaisi evaluate and develop their community-based services. The wider project proposal was unfortunately unsuccessful in gaining funding from ESRC in 2015, however alternative avenues of funding for this project are currently being investigated. 2) Developed networks and collaborations between academic and non academic stakeholders: over 100 participants took part in the events, these included professionals from think tanks, voluntary sector organisations, design professionals, activists and policy consultants. Travel expenses were available for both non-academic attendees and early career researchers: approximately five of these were given out per seminar. Non academic speakers, of which there was at least one per seminar (eg from New Economics Foundation, Social Care Institute for Excellence, Shared Lives) were also paid a stipend for participation. Some of the collaborations sparked relate directly to the research team around the further research discussed above, and around the creative digital resource discussed below. However we are aware that further contacts and collaborations will have been sparked by the events, that we are not necessarily able to track directly. However we do have the following comments taken from the evaluation of the final seminar which indicate some of the connections made through the series: - I attended the final two seminars of this series and have found both to strike an excellence balance of informality, open-ness and sharing, with great organisation, networking opportunities and importantly a space for generating ideas across disciplines, some of which will I will develop further in relation to my own research - Great fusion of academic, policy, practice. BRILLIANT: Interdisciplinary; focus on housing (much ignored); home (a vital focus); quality presentations and discussions; friendly, informal atmosphere. Inspired and motivated by the discussions and networking. - Very interesting set of papers and discussions, useful for debating care ideas and sustaining care policy objectives. Useful to my own research programme. 3) Developed a collaboration between artists and researchers and a digital resource on methodologies for use by other researchers and artists. The fourth event in the series was an early career Methods Workshop held in May 2014, which focused on using visual and material culture as both method and research focus. During the workshop participants collaborated with artists Susi Arnott and Crispin Hughes to reflect on and document their research practices. This resulted in an online digital resource, entitled Research in the Making, which was exhibited at the final event in the series and is available online (http://www.homespaceseminars.org/research-in-the-making.html) |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Policy & public services |
| Description | Influence on development of community services for RENAISI social enterprise |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | A pilot research project was undertaken during summer 2014, arising from the seminar series, exploring women's roles in community organising and activism in a context of austerity. Eleanor Jupp worked with RENAISI social enterprise in London to undertake research with a group of women employed by the service to explore the values of their activities in a community context. Two reports were produced for RENAISI, which they used to help inform the development of their community services and the values that might be placed on the more informal aspects of their activities. |
| URL | http://www.renaisi.com/schools-and-communities/ |
| Description | Home Spaces Four: Methods Workshop: objects and images in research |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This event was programmed as a 'methods workshop', aimed at postgraduate students in particular. Postgrad students had travel costs reimbursed to support attendance. The purpose was to share and explore innovative methods for researching domestic and institutional spaces, paying attention to the role of objects and images in the research process. There were three presentations by postgraduate students or early career researchers with much of the time given over to discussion. We also initiated a creative participatory arts project during the workshop, whereby researchers made images and audio recordings about objects that were important to them in their research (see Artistic products).. Comments from evaluation included the following: Got some good ideas about dissemination beyond exhibitions (as well as about different ways of approaching exhibitions) Really stimulating idea- heard some really interesting presentations and met people who I hope to keep in touch with. So great to meet people doing such fascinating research and its given me plenty of ideas to take away and think about Very interested to see the work being done in contemporary institutions around material culture. I am stimulated to try and recover evidence of material culture in my historical sites Thank you for a lovely day. I have gained new ideas and made connections . Really participative Was really useful meeting people focusing on home in such different ways and really got me thinking about how I can incorporate the visual into my research With objects, spaces and visual research/culture. It helped me to clarify (a little!) my own thoughts about my PhD work. This was an extremely interesting day- and very, very, useful. Thank you! Also great to be able to share so many ideas with others researching in similar fields Also one of the research team, Dr Alison Clark subsequently gave a key note presentation at the History of Education student conference on Writing and academic space in June 2014 at the University of Nottingham based on ideas generated at this event. A book proposal on the material culture of research, including objects and images created by doctoral students and supervisors is currently being developed by Alison Clark, involving some of the researchers at this event and will be submitted to Sage. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.homespaceseminars.org/seminar-four.html |