This project aims to improve child protection responses for children and young people living with domestic violence by providing effective early help. It is based on a partnership between researchers at the University of Central Lancashire and lead professionals from children's services and domestic violence services in Blackpool. Domestic violence affects a large minority of children living in the UK. Between 12% to 24% of children and young people will be exposed to domestic violence during childhood and 3% will experience this within the last 12 months (Radford et al, 2013). Domestic violence is four times higher than the national rate in Blackpool and it is estimated that one in every eight children (12%) will have been exposed in the past year. Research has shown that living with domestic violence can have a harmful and lasting impact on children's health, mental health, development and life chances (Stanley, 2011). Children exposed to domestic violence are at greater risk of experiencing abuse or being abusive in their own relationships as adults (Kitzman et al, 2003). Domestic violence is commonly associated with the most complex child protection cases (Munro, 2011) and a recent report concluded that the police response towards victims of domestic violence is 'not good enough' (HMIC, 2014). There were 2,396 calls about domestic violence made to the Blackpool police in 2012-3 where there were children in the household. Domestic violence related calls to the police have reduced recently but referrals of high risk cases to the Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs) have continued to increase. Currently over 782 children are involved in high risk cases referred to MARAC. Blackpool has three independent domestic violence advocates (CIDVA) dedicated to work with children and young people. Over 300 children are in contact with these services each year (CAADA, 2014). MARACs and advocates however work only with high level risk cases and the local authority has identified a need to provide earlier help to families before abuse escalates to this high risk stage or before children have problems with behaviour or health as result. A new early help service will be set up, led by new Early Help Coordinators (EHCs) based in Sure Start services in two different areas of Blackpool. The service will work with families with children under the age of 16 who are living with 'standard' (rather than 'high') risk domestic violence. The research project will build on and aim to improve existing evidence on early identification, assessment and intervention responses to children living with domestic violence in Blackpool. There will be two comparator sites, where standard risk cases will be responded to as 'business as usual', without the EHC services and their specialist follow up, assessment, referral and response pathways. The research is an ambitious project which depends on good collaboration between Blackpool's children's services and the university research team over a four year period. The researchers will work closely with the new service, providing evidence to inform the development of the project, assessing the process of implementation and, later when the project is established, bringing together evidence on the impact on children and their resilience, the impact on their families and the professionals who work with them. The research will include an evaluation of the costs of the early response model. Case studies will be produced to illustrate the impact of the early response on a child's journey towards safety and resilience. Young people, their families and professionals in Blackpool will be consulted about the design of the early response model and the design and conduct of the research. Findings will be promoted locally, nationally and internationally to share any information that can be used to help children and their families in the future.

The resort of Blackpool holds a unique place in the affections of generations of British holidaymakers. The town's iconic landmarks of the Tower, Pleasure Beach, Prom and Piers provide a backdrop for busy summer seasons followed in autumn by the famous Illuminations. However, for those living in large parts of Blackpool, life paints a very different picture. Government statistics rank Blackpool was as England's 4th most deprived region with only 43% of pupils obtaining 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE and less than 12% entering Higher Education. This Leadership Fellowship in Public Engagement (PE) is in collaboration with Blackpool Council and seeks to inspire young people in the town into engaging with and subsequently pursing a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This will provide them with better future career prospects as well as build a more skilled workforce within the region. The work will also train other researchers to undertake similar approaches to engagement in other parts of the country. There are three strands: 1. The Fellowship will allow me to engage with a specific group of young people from these deprived areas over a three-year period from Year 6 (Primary) through to Year 8 (Secondary). This engagement will consist of school visits by myself and other astronomers, community events and trips to specialised UCLan facilities. These are the UCLan/Ri Young Scientist Centre (YSC; a vibrant laboratory space dedicated to offering interactive STEM workshops) and Alston Observatory (a teaching and PE facility that houses both modern and historical telescopes, exhibitions and a planetarium). Each event will have a lesson plan of what is to be achieved and how it will be evaluated. Example activities include building a Mars Rover through to living close to our stormy Sun. The focus will be on inspiring young people to engage in STEM and so spark their aspiration of pursuing a career in science. An annual workshop for the participating teachers will be held along with an annual community-based mini-science festival to which the families of the pupil cohort will be invited. 2. It is important to use the opportunities that arise from this work to train scientists in PE. Researchers from all over the UK will be invited to join in the YSC activities to experience for themselves how best to work in this environment. On visits to schools, I will also take with me early career researchers from my own university. Both of these activities have the important element of the pupils themselves meeting inspiring scientists who can be role models for them. 3. In 2016, UCLan delivered an STFC-funded interactive astrophysics exhibition and art installation project in Whitehaven, Cumbria (see a short movie at https://gmoo.gl/bB9gUC ). Thus I will use the opportunity of the Fellowship to pursue this work further in Blackpool. The Council are keen to see these PE opportunities being associated with what the resort is best known for. This includes; - Astrophysics at the Blackpool Illuminations: The art installation above consisted of a large, semi-circular projection of solar images along with a specially composed soundtrack and an Sun educational movie. I will collaborate with the Blackpool Illuminations team to assess the most impactful way of developing this science imagery. - Dance workshops: With the famous Tower Ballroom, the resort is synonymous with dance of all types. With Blackpool Council, I will investigate working with appropriate local dance groups to employ and adapt the astronomy dance workshops previously developed. - Science Stand-up Comedy: Blackpool's comedy heritage is unsurpassed. Yet the interest in science stand-up has not touched the resort. One appropriate route to introduce this would be to host a "Bright Club Blackpool" (www.brightclub.org). Collaborating with the Council provides a route to working alongside venues and seeking sponsorship accordingly.

Research, including some that we have done, says other ways of improving young people's mental health might be just as good, if not better, than current mental health services. This project would explore another way. Does getting involved in 'civic activism' benefit young people (YP for short) who face many disadvantages? 'Civic activism' means doing community projects together that make not just our own individual lives better; but other YP's too. It involves developing what university researchers call our 'civic identity'. This involves feeling we belong to a community whether face to face, online or both -'glocal' communities is what academics call them. Our hunch is that creating belonging through civic activism could help us have positive identities. We think adolescence, a word used to describe the age group between 11-25 years old, is the ideal time for this support because we are developing identity as we move out of childhood. Research tells us that a strong and positive identity offers us direction in life and indicates that we matter in the world. All this is good for our current and future mental health. We know civic activism needs researching because in Blackpool we have already had success experimenting with a new way of supporting YP's mental health. This is based on an approach to resilience that is about 'Beating the Odds and Changing the Odds' which we call Boingboing Resilience. Our approach helps us build our own resilience as well as challenge the disadvantages that increase risks in the first place. This project would help us build on that work and share it with other YP and their adult supporters in Cornwall and Newham. These are other areas facing big challenges. We also want to learn from Newham and Cornwall's YP's work, including on climate change activism. Our new and equal partnership of co-researchers come from different generations, professions and backgrounds; YP facing many disadvantages, adult community researchers, academics and mental health professionals. What we will do 1. Our new research will survey 300 YP in Blackpool, Newham and Cornwall. This will test survey questions already available about YP's identity, civic activism and mental health. We will involve YP with learning difficulties because they often get left out. 2. We will do a 'literature review'. This means exploring what academics worldwide have already published on building YP's positive identities against the odds. This includes resilience, mental health and civic activism aimed at improving mental health. 3. We will organise and run a big meeting (a 'networking summit') and invite lots of people interested in our work and who have influence. Young co-researchers will present the literature review findings with adults and we will motivate people to do a new big bid together. 4. Blackpool, Brighton, Newham and Cornwall team members will plan and run 3 events using YP-friendly technologies, co-designed and co-led by YP, including YP with learning difficulties. We call these 'social learning spaces' (SLSs for short). They will find out about: a) YP connecting with their communities' history b) YP getting actively involved with their present communities, to get involved in making positive changes c) YP actively contributing to their communities' future through civic activism. 5. With everyone's permission, we will record what happens in the SLSs. This will be written up as 'findings'. The findings will help us plan a civic activist approach (called an intervention framework). We will share work in academic publications but also in ways that more people can understand it, including on the internet. With more people joining in, together we will write a big bid so we can test our civic activism intervention framework.

The proposed project follows on from the successful Stories2Connect (S2C) project which worked in participatory ways with disadvantaged children and young people to create stories based on their lived experiences, told through a range of co-designed story-telling digital machines for different audiences. S2C was shortlisted for the AHRC-Wellcome Health Humanities Medal 2018, and won a prize of £10,000 from EPSRC to create a film about the impact and engagement of the project. We created 50 stories and designed and produced five artefacts to access stories through physical interaction and a mobile phone app. In addition, 43 of the stories have been printed as storybooks, and 18 have been created as films on the project website. The combination of stories and digital artefacts has been significant in creating a whole new genre/method/means of story-telling, involving elements of touch, space, movement, enhancing the sensual and physical experience and thereby adding to the knowledge exchange process. This follow-on funding will be used to engage with new audiences and new themes of work by collaborating with organisations encountered during and since the project, specifically with the Rusland Horizons Trust, Art Gene, Blackpool Council, the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, environmental charities and professional storytellers. These connections link with a theme that developed, about young people's participation in the appreciation and uses of their natural environment. Our participatory methodology will be applied in developing and using the new resources and will lead to co-produced artistic outputs focused on contributing young people's perspectives to decision-making about landscape. Our evaluation interviews and feedback from publics and professionals who have accessed the outputs have demonstrated the significance of the project for improving engagement, self-esteem, confidence, resilience and attainment for the disadvantaged young people who have been involved. As a team, the young people and the academics therefore intend to create a means of enabling other groups to develop their own stories and bespoke story-telling devices. Case studies in the North West will take place in Barrow-in-Furness, Blackpool, and the Rusland Valley. These three areas are all in NW England, rich in natural landscapes and close to areas of high deprivation. Disadvantaged young people from urban areas close to these natural environments do not necessarily benefit from them as much as those who visit from further afield. This means that the local populations are marginalised in any decisions that are made about their own landscapes. Our focus on disadvantaged/disabled children and young people is of particular importance as their voices are the least likely to be heard. We are collaborating with a range of community groups to work with their aims of enhancing children's appreciation and understanding of the countryside and on improving adults' understanding of children and young people's needs within natural environments. For example, RHT will conduct environmental workshops with groups from schools in urban areas relatively close to the Rusland Heritage area of the Lake District. Using collaborative methods for writing, as developed in S2C and described in a co-authored practitioner guide (Satchwell et al 2018), the SCBWI volunteers and local community volunteers will help the young people to co-create stories, poems and songs. Young people will benefit from participating and from having their perspectives captured and conveyed to influential stakeholders. Those stakeholders will benefit from recognising and including perspectives from children and young people in maintaining and creating landscapes. The general public will gain greater understanding of children and young people and landscapes which take them into account. The environment will benefit from greater care and attention from those who use it.

Context Public policy identifies the importance of the private sector and the enhancement of skills and knowledge in the facilitation of economic performance and sustainable growth; factors which are particularly relevant at present, given the fragility of the economic recovery and the stated aim of government to rebalance the economy through private sector expansion. Regional development strategies have identified the improvement of SME leadership and management skills as one means of stimulating the local economy, alongside strengthening linkages between Lancashire's leading companies, universities and SMEs to share innovations and commercial potential. Objectives The proposed scheme involves the establishment of four local business networks - Blackpool, Burnley & Pendle, Chorley, Preston - each involving up to 30 businesses, across Lancashire. This provides the opportunity for participant businesses to share ideas with their peers, to share presentations made by academic researchers and business experts relating to areas of best practice, and discuss how these might be introduced into their own organisations. Businesses will have the opportunity to form links with each other, potentially forming supply chain arrangements, and broaden their understanding of how they can make use of public resources and their local university's expertise concerning enterprise and employability. Public sector partners will, moreover, have the opportunity to form closer links with a selection of businesses from across the county, and this should facilitate better informed policy development. Consequently, the scheme is intended to encourage improved competitiveness, productivity and sustainability, through the exchange of knowledge and the creation of a space in which businesses are able to formulate strategic responses. The Programme There will be four masterclass events for each network, comprising presentations from academic and business experts, sharing their insights into various aspects of business activity with participants. Topics will include marketing, HR and dispute resolution, access to finance and flexible, high performance approaches. Each session will then involve action learning sets (one on the day with another follow-up session between scheduled events), where participants can discuss the ideas presented, explore the relevance in terms of their own business contexts and develop action plans to realise these potentially beneficial effects. Sets will be facilitated to try to achieve the best outcomes. Additional support will be provided via virtual resources, including a website, which will feature a business directory (of members), information on events and an interactive element (blog or otherwise), whereby participants can continue to interact with each other. Participants will be selected from SMEs in the four target areas, with a desire to ensure a variety of different types of firms are represented in each network (length of trading, sector). Project management The network will be monitored by a project management process, which will involve representatives of all stakeholders - business participants, business and local authority partners, and academics. This will ensure the programme is appropriate, objectives are being met and financial rules followed. Evaluation A rigorous evaluation process will seek to establish the precise impact the network may have - this will combined focus group, interview and survey approaches, and try to discover a before-and-after effect. This is difficult to establish over a project lasting only one year, but it is important to consider the outcomes arising from the scheme by using the best information available. Legacy To ensure the sustainability of the network, beyond the funded period of one year, businesses are involved in all aspects of the scheme (design, management, delivery) and resources (website) will be handed over at scheme end