Events – Comment and analysis

Children’s voices, family transitions and everyday care – chairing sessions at ICFC 2025

Posted on July 10, 2025July 11, 2025 by amy.woolford

Dr Gözde Doğanyılmaz-Burger, Senior Research Coordinator at the University of Bristol, reflects on the sessions she chaired at the first International Child and Family Conference held in Bristol on 17-19 June, and the questions those sessions set out to answer:

How are children’s voices recognised (or dismissed) in legal, policy and everyday decisions that shape their family lives?
How do caregiving expectations, policy design, and labour markets affect family life and gender equality?

Session 1: Children’s agency, participation, and family transitions

On day two of the conference, I had the pleasure of chairing and presenting in a powerful session on Children’s Agency and Participation, a topic close to my heart and the focus of my PhD research.

The session featured four studies that offered unique insights into how children’s voices are heard (or silenced) in matters that deeply affect them:

Children’s experiences of parental separation
Dr Susan Kay-Flowers explored 25 years of international research on children’s experiences of parental separation, highlighting ethical dilemmas around participation and voice.

Father-child contact after domestic violence
Prof Simon Lapierre and Ms Naomi Abrahams shared findings from Canada on children’s participation in decisions about father-child contact after domestic violence, proposing information as a critical fifth dimension to Lundy’s model.

Children’s rights and family law
Prof Maebh Harding and Dr Jakub Pawliczak challenged us to rethink constitutional conservatism in Ireland and Poland and asked whether children’s rights can drive more inclusive family law.

Communication during divorce
And I presented my research comparing young people’s experiences in Türkiye and England, focusing on how communication (or lack of it) during divorce shapes their emotional wellbeing, agency and rights.

Each presentation sparked important questions about children’s legal, psychological and emotional needs, and how research, policy and practice can respond more meaningfully.

Thank you to the presenters and all who joined the discussion. It was a joy to be part of this international conversation on centring children’s voices in family transitions.

It was extra special to share my findings on Turkish and English young people’s experiences of divorce-related communication, and to have my main supervisor, Prof Debbie Watson, whose guidance has been invaluable throughout my PhD, in the room, along with my mum Prof Nesrin Özsoy-Bür, who travelled all the way from Türkiye to support me (especially with childcare!).

Session 2: Care, family policy, and the everyday experiences of work-life balance

On the final day of the conference, I had the privilege of chairing another incredible session, this time focused on care, family policy, and the everyday experiences of work-life balance.

It was a joy to listen to such rich, thought-provoking presentations that explored how policy, labour markets, and social expectations shape caregiving, while also highlighting the voices, presence, and roles of children and families so often left out of mainstream narratives.

Caregiving responsibilities and gender inequality
Ms Curran McSwigan (Deputy Director of the Economic Program at Third Way, USA) presented a powerful analysis of how caregiving responsibilities continue to drive gender inequality in the US labour market, particularly for women without a college degree. Her research reminded us how the absence of robust childcare and paid leave policies contributes to ongoing cycles of disadvantage for women and children.

Work-family reconciliation policies
Dr Manisha Mathews (University of Birmingham, UK) critically examined the UK’s work-family reconciliation policies, arguing that current policy design still reflects the “male breadwinner” model and limits fathers’ ability to participate in childcare. Her comparison with the Nordic model underscored the value of long, well-paid leave for both parents in promoting children’s cognitive and emotional wellbeing.

Home as both the family and work hub
Dr Jana Mikats (Webster Vienna Private University, Austria) introduced the concept of dense, intimate knowledge, referring to children’s deep, nuanced awareness of their parents’ work when that work is done at home. Her ethnographic study of Austrian families challenged traditional boundaries between “work” and “family”, offering a fresh lens on intimacy, co-presence, and children’s everyday lives in digitally shaped households.

In our discussion, we reflected on how policy and discourse often centre around nuclear, heterosexual, two-parent families, excluding the lived realities of single-parent households, blended families, grandparents, friends, and broader networks of care. There was a clear call to recognise and support the many ways care is provided beyond dominant family models.

I’m grateful to have chaired such a thoughtful and intersectional session and for the opportunity to connect research across disciplines and contexts.

Rethinking parenting, care and children’s roles in society: keynote speeches from ICFC 2025

Posted on July 10, 2025July 10, 2025 by amy.woolford

The first International Child and Family Conference took place at the University of Bristol from 17 to 19 June 2025. It brought together experts in childhood and family to explore a range of current themes across its three days. Within this, the three keynote speeches focused on some of the key areas from a research and policy perspective.

Dr Gözde Doğanyılmaz-Burger, Senior Research Coordinator at the University of Bristol, gives a summary of each of the inspiring and thought-provoking keynote speeches at the conference.

Prof Esther Dermott on the impact of digital technology

We kicked off the International Child and Family Conference 2025 with a thought-provoking keynote by Prof Esther Dermott (University of Bristol Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences), who challenged us to rethink how digital technologies are shaping families, relationships and parenting.

She asked us to consider:

What does co-presence look like in a world of constant digital communication?
How do state systems, private companies, and invisible data processes (like predictive analytics) influence parenting and family life?
Are our existing social science tools enough, or do we need new methods to make sense of a digitally entangled world?

From Yondr phone pouches promoting “smart-free” childhoods to Studybugs apps tracking school absence for health outcomes, Prof Dermott highlighted the double-edged nature of digital tools: supportive on one hand, but deeply entangled in systems of oversight and inequality on the other.

Prof Dermott encouraged us to shift away from narrow ideas of “good parenting” and move toward a relational approach, recognising the complex, dynamic interactions between children, parents, institutions, and technologies.

An inspiring way to start the conference, with big questions to think about over the next two days!

Mr James Bury on the care system in England

On day 2, we were pleased to welcome James Bury, Interim Managing Director of CoramBAAF and Coram Family & Childcare (UK), as our second keynote speaker. He offered a thought-provoking reflection on the care system in England.

Drawing on his practice experience, Mr Bury questioned whether the complex systems we’ve built truly align with children’s needs and how we can better support permanence through psychological, legal, and physical stability.

He highlighted four key pressures:

Declining foster carer numbers
Challenges in adopter recruitment
Complexities in post-adoption contact
The impact of education and mental health support on placement stability

Mr Bury urged us to innovate, simplify, and collaborate, ensuring our systems are responsive to the real journeys of children and families.

Prof Tatek Abebe on the ‘commons agenda’

We began the final day of the conference with a powerful keynote from Prof Tatek Abebe (NTNU), Centre Convenor and an expert in childhood studies and development research with a focus on African contexts.

Prof Abebe drew us into a “commons agenda”, a perspective that sees children not just as individuals but as active contributors to collective life in their communities through social labour, care, and cultural practices.

Prof Abebe explored how children’s “living labour” in domestic work, communal exchanges, and even music activism creates value, resists structural violence, and forms part of shared social economies.

He introduced Mahiberawi Nuro community networks in Ethiopia as living examples of communal support systems beyond state provision, embodying what he called “commoning”.

He advocated for ecologically regenerative, decolonial research methods that foreground children’s relational existence, encouraging us to rethink childhood studies through a moral, institutional, and ecological lens.

Prof Abebe’s keynote challenged us to expand how we understand childhood, embracing collective responsibility, ethical solidarity, and research that honours children’s active roles in shaping community life.

Thank you to our three keynote speakers for their fascinating insights which gave all of us attending the opportunity to reflect on these topic areas and on our understanding of the issues, and the implications of these, in relation to our own areas of research and policy.

Are we really witnessing a great ‘devolution deception’?

Posted on November 16, 2015May 2, 2023 by policystudies

As part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science, a debate took place in Bristol on 9/11/15 on the impacts of directly elected mayors on cities, including contributions from Baroness Barbara Janke, former Leader of Bristol City Council and Member of the House of Lords, Thom Oliver, Political Scientist, UWE, David Sweeting, Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol, and Ben Harrison, Centre for Cities. A lively debate included reference to George Osborne’s plans for cities and city regions, and particularly whether we are witnessing a ‘devolution deception’.

Here, Ben Harrison argues the case against such an interpretation.

To dismiss the Government’s devolution agenda simply as a “deception” is to opt out of a debate at the very time that real change is finally possible.

I was recently in Bristol earlier this week speaking about the merits of directly elected mayors, when I heard a familiar refrain during the audience Q and A. Far from being a significant redistribution of power from the central state to local areas, the Government’s entire devolution agenda, the attendee said, was nothing more than a “devolution deception”.

This is far from the only time I’ve heard this kind of critique put forward, not least from the national Labour party and its new leader, and earlier this week from the leader of the Liberal Democrats. But does it really stack up – is the Government really deceiving people when it comes to its intentions on devolution?

Let’s examine the biggest concerns that tend to underpin claims that devolution is but a fig leaf for other, hidden policy agendas.

The Cities Bill does not specifically commit the Government to provide any additional powers to local government

A key part of the parliamentary opposition to the Government’s agenda has been that despite the rhetoric, the Devolution Bill does not identify a list of specific policies that will be devolved to a specific set of places, and therefore it won’t allow for the devolution of anything at all.

In fact, the opposite is the case. The Bill is a deliberately generic and enabling piece of legislation that essentially allows for the devolution of almost anything – housing, health, welfare, policing and more – to a local level, and allows for different settlements to be reached in different places depending on local appetite and capacity. The only limit on devolution under the model will be the willingness and ability of local and national politicians to reach agreement on what will be included. And of course the experience in London, where the powers of the GLA has grown significantly since the turn of the century, suggests this picture can and will change over time.

The Government is driving this process from the top down

Yet despite the potential expansiveness of what is on offer, many still struggle to equate the current policy process with devolution because they see the Government setting the agenda and criteria for what will or won’t be devolved within the framework set by the Bill. If it’s a ‘top down process’, how could it possibly be devolution?

The major factor that has led to the current round of city-region deals, featuring more substantial devolution than previous attempts to decentralise, has been the active involvement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. George Osborne has had to deploy his own substantial political capital to set clear criteria that must be met to achieve devolution, and most critically, in order to prise control away from Whitehall departments (including the Treasury) who instinctively look to control and constrain any moves to push power down from the centre.

That’s why it is not contradictory for the process of decentralisation to be set out and driven from the centre – in fact, in a country where central Government holds almost all the power, it is necessary if we are to see tangible progress made. In 21st Century Britain, the dominance of Whitehall departments, coupled with the lack of power held by UK cities, means that only the authority of the highest offices in the land can drive the devolution of real power to cities and city-regions across the country.

The process has taken place entirely behind closed doors with no public scrutiny

A separate concern relates to the lack of transparency that has characterised the deals currently being negotiated between the Government and city-regions. Unlike in previous rounds of city and growth deals, proposals have not always been made public, and with goalposts shifting, councils have struggled to communicate to their communities and colleagues in the private sector what devolution will mean for their place.

These concerns are understandable and should be addressed as a priority in the months to come – indeed already places are engaging in more detailed consultations on new arrangements for their places. But it is also important to recognise that these deals are being negotiated by politicians at a national level with a manifesto commitment to do so, and locally elected politicians with a mandate to represent the interests of their constituents. Equally, while other approaches may have been possible, the reasons why the process has to date been undertaken in this way are also understandable.

The Government has deliberately eschewed setting out a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to devolution, and has encouraged places to come forward with their own proposals in time for them to be implemented during the coming Parliament. Agreeing these proposals requires political compromise and a willingness to take on, share, and give up different powers and responsibilities. The political reality is that these are often difficult and uncertain conversations that benefit from a degree of privacy, to allow for more honest and frank conversations to take place. It would be much harder, if not impossible, to conduct these negotiations in public.

This isn’t about the devolution of power, but the devolution of budget cuts

Finally, and perhaps most significantly in terms of an accusation that the Government has a “hidden agenda” when it comes to devolution, is the issue of cuts to local government budgets. Many believe that the Chancellor is in essence giving a little with one hand, but taking dramatically more with the other, while leaving councils with the responsibility to deal with the consequences for public services.

There can be no doubt that local government has undergone significant resource reductions since 2010, and as we heard from the Chancellor this week, there will be more pain for the sector to come in this Parliament. Observers are right to suggest such moves signal a concerted effort to change the size and scope of the state, and that doing so raises profound questions regarding the future of public service provision. But to suggest this is some kind of hidden agenda is, I think, misjudged.

Firstly, the Chancellor advertises his ‘austerity credentials’ proudly – they are a key part of his own personal brand and no one can have been surprised that the forthcoming Spending Review will feature more cuts. Secondly, whether one agrees with the ambition or not (and many do not), I think the Chancellor sees devolution as a necessary and complementary factor required to deliver a smaller state. The thinking here is, yes budgets will be dramatically smaller in the future, but the ability of (and imperative on) local leaders to drive efficiencies and new models of public service provision will be enhanced. Of course this is a political and financial judgement, and the merits of it can and will be contested, but on the Chancellor’s terms at least, devolution is not a distraction from austerity, but actually goes hand in hand with it.

It is to be expected that many are suspicious of the impact devolution will have across the country, and that many remain sceptical regarding the Government’s commitment to truly give power away. We have, after all, been here many times before, and failed to see control wrestled away from the central state. Equally, given the scale of public spending cuts planned, concerns regarding the future provision of public services are also understandable.

Yet to dismiss the Government’s devolution agenda simply as a “deception” is to opt out of a debate at the very time that real change is finally possible. It’s true that the prizes on offer today may seem modest, particularly when compared to the kinds of powers wielded by cities in Europe or America. But after decades of centralisation, the real questions those with doubts about the current agenda should be asking is how can we make sure that the incremental reform that is on the table today is delivered; how do we ensure that places do have greater ability to shape the way in which the forthcoming cuts affect them; and how do we ensure that, bolstered by newly established city-region leadership across the country, the devolution deals of 2015 mark the beginning of the story, not the end.

This was first posted on the Centre for Cities blog.

Why how we measure poverty matters

Posted on October 26, 2015May 2, 2023 by policystudies

Tessa Coombes, PhD student in the School for Policy Studies, former councillor, ex-policy director at Business West, and part-time blogger considers the latest debates in poverty measurement as illustrated in an event organised by the Centre for Poverty and Social Justice

There’s an interesting debate that’s been going on for some time now about measuring poverty and getting the issue onto the agenda so people sit up and take notice in the right way. It’s an area of academia that I haven’t really engaged in before, but one where I have a personal interest in seeking to see the debate move in the right kind of direction. A direction that takes us away from the concept of demonising the poor and those living in poverty and instead acknowledges the levels of inequality and seeks to do something about it in a way that benefits those most in need. The recent Policy & Politics conference in Bristol had inequality and poverty as one of its main themes and at the time I wrote a couple of blogs on the plenary sessions – the human cost of inequality (Kate Pickett) and why social inequality persists (Danny Dorling). Both these presentations provided plenty of evidence to illustrate just how significant a problem we have in the UK and how it is getting worse.

Last week I went to a seminar on this very issue run by the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice at the University of Bristol, where the subject of debate was about how to gain traction and create change from academic research and evidence. The focus of the discussion was about using living standards rather than poverty indicators and the difference this can make when trying to attract the attention of politicians and policy makers. It was an interesting and thought provoking debate which gave some pointers on how we can translate measures and indicators into policy and action, as well as why it’s helpful to look at living standards for everyone rather than just looking at those in poverty.

The first speaker, Bryan Perry from the Ministry of Social Development in New Zealand, talked about how by using evidence in the ‘right’ way, that was responsive to the needs of politicians, using the Material Wellbeing Index, they had managed to gain traction and make an impact on policy. The key was talking about trends rather than absolute numbers, providing simple statistics that tell the ‘right’ story and making the most of the opportunities as they arise. The focus of their work on living standards has served to highlight the differences, to show how life at the bottom is radically different, and to emphasise the point, in simple terms, about what people don’t have rather than about what they need. This has resulted in a centre-right government actually implementing increases in benefit payments as part of their policy, rather than seeking to reduce them at every opportunity.

The discussion then turned to the UK with a presentation from Demi Patsios, on the development of a UK Living Standards Index (UKLSI), where the point was made that in order to understand the poor we need to understand the rich, therefore just looking at those in poverty is only a small part of the story we need to capture. The ability to understand poverty in the general context of society provides that broader picture and story, which serves to highlight the extent and levels of inequality, rather than just the hardships at one end of the spectrum and enables us to develop policies that are directed at the full spectrum of society. The UKLSI aims to measure what matters most to people under three main themes: what we have, what we do and where we live. Whilst it is much more complicated that this and brings together both objective and subjective data into 10 domains and 275 different measures, the overall concept and themes are simple to understand and highlight some important differences and issues. The Index helps us to understand ‘what we have’ by looking at essential v desirables and luxuries v wants. It looks at ‘what we do’ through political, social and community engagement and ‘where we live’ by satisfaction with our accommodation and neighbourhood. It brings together the types of measures that appear in things like the Living Wage calculations and local authority Quality of Life indicators, and it does it in a comprehensive and compelling fashion.

But what does all this add to the debate and will our politicians take any notice? How do we make this type of discussion gain traction in the UK, in the face of current media and government interest in individualising the problem and stigmatising the poor, whilst ensuring the poverty discourse is firmly focused away from the rich and powerful?

The current government’s approach, as outlined by Dave Gordon in his presentation, is to repeal the only legislation we had with real targets to reduce poverty (the Child Poverty Act) and to replace this with measures on educational attainment and workless households. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how this approach can work with the recent commitment under the new United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” and to “reduce inequality within and among countries”.

From my own experience, as an ex-politician and someone who has worked with politicians and policy makers over many years, the key for me is making the messages simple. Yes, providing the evidence to support the simple statements, but only after you’ve sold them the message to begin with. Overcomplicating things with lots of measures and targets just serves to mask the message and hide the key points. Something that combines simple messages with supporting evidence; that illustrates disparities in living standards; and provides for micro level analysis would seem to be the right kind of approach.

This blog was first posted on Tessa’s own blog

Bridge Learning Campus visit to ENHS

Posted on July 2, 2015May 2, 2023 by policystudies

Recently a group of Year 8 students from Bridge Learning Campus spent the day with staff in the centre for Exercise, Nutrition, and Health Sciences. Two of the girls (Amy Manning and Jess Martin) were winner and runner-up respectively of the Bristol Bright Night (Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds) award. As part of their prize Mark Edwards (ENHS) and Chloe Anderson (Centre for Public Engagement) arranged for the girls to visit the health-focused Centre. Mark reflects here on the fun and insightful day that ENHS spent with the girls.

Five girls, accompanied by their Science teacher, Ms Williams, spent the day learning about the research we do and gave us some great insights into the barriers they face to being physically active. Almost all of our work into physical activity is assessed by accelerometers (which give a sophisticated measure of physical activity). Byron Tibbitts from ENHS offered a tour de force of the little red device we use to measure activity. In true Blue Peter fashion, the girls made a rudimentary accelerometer and then did their own mini controlled trial with the real things! The girls not only conducted the experiment with Byron, but then went on to analyse and interpret the data too.

Next up, Emma Solomon, Bex Newell and Rosina Cross (the B-Proac1v team) taught the girls all about blood pressure (a measure used in the BHF-funded study into young children’s physical activity). The girls confirmed our hypotheses that music and physical activity both affect blood pressure levels.

Finally, Kate Banfield built on the work we do in our FAB Kids outreach project to discuss sugar content in drinks. In an illuminating study, the girls were genuinely shocked to see the amount of sugar in drinks commonly consumed by people their age.

After a great lunch in the Refectory we headed back to have a roundtable discussion on the barriers girls face to being physically active. The declining physical activity levels of female adolescents is a real public health concern (and the focus of the Acitve7 and PLAN-A studies), so this gave staff in ENHS a great opportunity to hear about the issues girls face. Mark Edwards and Sarah Harding led the discussion and were hugely impressed with the candid and insightful observations the girls made.

The final part of the day was always going to be the most nerve racking for the girls. But they excelled. Speaking to a room packed full of academics – scary for even a seasoned prof! – the girls gave a brief presentation on what they learnt throughout the day, with a wonderful practical example of how accelerometers work. The girls then spoke about the barriers they face to being active and presented some possible solutions for getting around them. The key messages we heard were that physical activities need to be FUN! There also needs to be the opportunity for girls-only activity, a chance to try new activities in a welcoming arena, and girls want to dress in whatever they feel comfortable. In making our research effective and getting it to truly speak to the people it is aimed at, it is vital we hear the voices of the girls.

It was a pleasure having the Bridge Learning Campus girls and Ms Williams come in – the girls did themselves, their teachers, and the school proud. We hope that they not only learnt some interesting things about physical activity but also had a good deal of fun too. None of the girls knew anybody who had been to university, and none of them had ever visited a university before. We hope to have inspired them to consider university as a viable option for them when they begin thinking about their future beyond secondary school.

Due to the success of the day, we hope to team up with the Centre for Public Engagement to make this an annual event.

How are children’s voices recognised (or dismissed) in legal, policy and everyday decisions that shape their family lives?

How do caregiving expectations, policy design, and labour markets affect family life and gender equality?

Session 1: Children’s agency, participation, and family transitions

Session 2: Care, family policy, and the everyday experiences of work-life balance

Prof Esther Dermott on the impact of digital technology

Mr James Bury on the care system in England

Prof Tatek Abebe on the ‘commons agenda’