Manchester Metropolitan University has been successful with an ESRC bid for a PhD studentship in the context of early years and asked if we can share this information with GM colleagues and wider partners:

Incorporating family voices in the planning and delivery of parenting support

Funded PhD Scholarship

Summary

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 in close collaboration with the family support charity Home Start Oldham, Stockport and Tameside (HOST), the student will carry out collaborative ethnographic research to:

1. examine how HOST is currently using family voices to inform its services;
2. explore how HOST’s practices in this area could be improved, both in its everyday work and in its strategic planning; and
3. consider how this work with HOST might be used to inform early years strategies more widely, for example through our regional partnerships within Greater Manchester and nationally through Home Start’s UK network.

A set of carefully designed impact activities will help to achieve these aims.

For further information including who to contact for informal enquiries please follow this link: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-study/scholarships/detail/edu-mg-2020-1-familyvoices-incorporating-family-voices-in-the-planning-and-delivery-of-parenting-support.php