High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and afterschool-care (ASC) services are crucial for children's equal opportunities, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are also crucial for supporting parents' ability to work and families' financial security. The closure of schools and childcare facilities and other social distancing measures in the wake of Covid-19, while important policies to reduce the spread of the virus and its burden on healthcare systems, created a national 'childcare crisis' with potentially severe effects on families' livelihoods and wellbeing, particularly for families in vulnerable circumstances. Since Covid-19 and its impacts are likely to be persistent, there is an urgent need for crisis-resilient solutions of high-quality childcare provision reaching all families beyond key workers. We know that community-based co-production can lead to more sustainable and effective local solutions than top-down policy-implementation, particularly for hard-to-reach groups. This project has two objectives: firstly, it will collate an evidence-base providing the most comprehensive picture on how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected families' childcare arrangements and wellbeing in the short and longer term. This will include collection of rich new data (in-depth interviews with parents and stakeholders) identifying the specific childcare needs and challenges of families in different circumstances (including socio-economic background, protected characteristics and geographical area), and its triangulation with secondary analysis of a wide range of data-sources on Covid-19 impact (including nationally representative surveys and convenience samples). Secondly, in partnership with local and national stakeholders and policymakers, the project will develop a co-produced policy-toolkit providing community-based implementation and practice pathways to support Local Councils' crisis responses and local communities in developing effective and sustainable childcare solutions during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. This childcare-toolkit will draw lessons from two local co-production labs (in a rural and an urban setting), from mapping exercises of diverse childcare contexts, and the collation of evidence on specific access problems and needs of different groups of families, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances. The innovative project-design combining a comprehensive array of data analysis with a collaborative co-production strategy for local service solutions will be pioneering in designing resilient childcare provision that protects family wellbeing during this pandemic and beyond. Our extensive analysis of a wide range of data will allow us to identify gaps in the existing data on experiences of families with young children during the Covid-19 pandemic and to make recommendations to policy-makers and data-collectors on what further data is required and what questions should be included in future data-collection. Our close collaboration with a wide range of project-partners in policy-making and civil society (e.g. Scottish Government, The Improvement Service and advocacy organisations such as Child Poverty Action Group, Close the Gap, One Parent Families Scotland, and Children in Scotland) helps ensure that our policy-toolkit is useful and applicable for a wide range of ongoing national and regional Covid-19 activities (e.g. 'CHANGE: Childcare and Nurture'; 'Access to Childcare Fund'-projects; 'Caring Community'- and 'Resilient Community'-projects; 'Critical childcare for vulnerable children'-programmes), and secondly, that it is widely disseminated by our partners across the country and different sectors

What Works Scotland will be a collaborative centre bringing together staff from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, other academics and key non-academic partners. Its aim is to support the use of evidence to plan and deliver sustained and transformative change based on agreed outcomes at all levels with a particular focus on the local. There is a particular focus on promoting the systematic use of evidence in the design, reform and delivery of public services. Examination of what works and what does not will take place in the context of the Scottish model, an approach to policy development that, while not unique, differs considerably from elsewhere in the UK. The team has adopted a demand led and collaborative approach and will work with a range of third sector organisations, different levels of central and local government and with Community Planning Partnerships to generate an evidence culture involving feedback, improvement methodology and expert support. The Christie Commission identified a range of problems facing Scotland including demographic change, economic and fiscal challenges, inter-institutional relationships and endemic long-term 'wicked issues'. It has also been estimated that in Scotland over 40 per cent of public service expenditure is the result of preventable issues. The Scottish model of public service delivery aims to ensure that services are designed for and with communities. This 'deliberative public policy analysis' demands that communities and those who design services are aware of best practice and evidence. The Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) are key to the delivery of these services with a focus on 'voice' through participatory, collective, decision-making, planning and delivery in the context of targets set by National Government. A key challenge for each CPP is to articulate its Single Outcome Agreement and relate this to both the outcomes set out in the National Performance Framework. However, a common criticism of the CPPs is that the implementation of the model so far has been limited and patchy. The focus of WWS will on the four key questions identified in the call: - How can we take what we know from individual projects and interventions and translate this into system-wide change? - What is working (or not working), and why, at the different levels of delivery and reform and at the interface between those levels? How do we identify actions which can be taken in communities, at CPP and the national levels to improve impact? - What does the evidence (including international) say about large-scale reform programmes that have succeeded or failed and the impact they had in a system-wide context? - Why do results vary geographically and between communities, and how can we balance local approaches with ensuring spread of what works? A wide range of methods - qualitative and qualitative - will be employed. The capabilities approach will provide the overarching framework. Originally developed by Amartya Sen, capabilities are in widespread use across the globe and underpin the work of a variety of organisations. It is a useful corrective to top down economic evaluations and fits well with the Scottish deliberative approach. We will develop the Capabilities framework and combine it with the outcomes-based National Performance Framework, ensuring that the Scottish model is intellectually grounded and contributes to broader international debates on these matters. We will have 3 workstreams: evidence into action; outcomes and capabilities; and spread, sustainability and scaling up. We will employ a range of methodologies including case studies collaborative action research, contribution analysis, elite interviews and content analysis, cost effectiveness and evaluation. WWS will focus on four case studies of key CPPS and work with them to help them change their core business processes within priority areas in four CPPs and will aim to achieve lasting impact.

Governments across the world have become increasingly aware of the social and economic problems caused by inequality. It's not just income inequality that is cause for concern but how different aspects of inequality-in health, education, employment and crime-combine to impoverish particular groups, and deepen divisions in society. For certain types of inequality, Scotland fares worse than comparable countries, particularly with respect to suicide, homicide, overcrowding and children living in poverty. As a result, the Scottish Government has launched a national strategy to create a 'Fairer Scotland'. For this initiative to be successful, however, it needs to have solid evidence which is based on a well-informed understanding of how the different dimensions of inequality interact and change over time. Our goal in this project is to achieve a step change in the quality and usefulness of the evidence base in Scotland by developing world-leading advances in how the multi-dimensional nature of inequality is understood. Working closely with policy makers at local and national level, we aim to support, guide and inform government policies with a view to achieving a genuine reduction in social inequalities. Our project is called AMMISS: Analysing Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Scale Inequalities in Scottish Society. It represents an ambitious and innovative research programme that will explore the causes and consequences of social inequalities in Scottish society in a much deeper and more joined-up way than has been achieved before. It is 'multi-dimensional' because we will explore multiple forms of inequality (e.g. poor health, low educational achievement, exposure to crime, failure to access the labour market, poor social mobility). Developing cutting-edge analysis we shall help policy makers understand how these different dimensions interact to affect life chances. It is 'multi-scale' because looking at inequality for a single level of geography or social unit can lead to a distorted understanding of inequality. So it is particularly important that we understand how inequalities impact at different levels both spatially (e.g. communities and cities) and socially (e.g. individuals and families). Our novel approach will allow us to analyse the causes and effects of multi-dimensional and multi-scale inequalities in a truly joined-up way, taking full advantage of Scotland's world-class administrative and survey data. AMMISS has two main themes. First, we will explore the way in which the neighbourhoods impact on how people experience inequalities and how changing patterns of poverty in Scottish cities impact on those experiences; for example, by affecting access to the labour market and exposure to crime. We will also examine how changing ethnic mix affects educational achievement and experiences of victimisation. Second, we will investigate how inequality impacts individuals over the course of their lives; for example, how experiences in early childhood affect social inequalities experienced later in life. We will also explore why some 'high risk' people and neighbourhoods remain 'resilient' to social inequalities, achieving positive outcomes against the odds. To make sense of such a broad range of issues we have brought together an impressive group of internationally recognised experts from various different areas of research. This will allow us to develop the innovative and insightful research needed to tackle inequality. Working closely with a range of organisations across Scotland, including central and local government and charities, will provide many opportunities for innovation and ensure that our work is relevant and useful for achieving a fairer society. Our ambition is to help those in positions of influence achieve real change. By making Scotland an exemplar for inequalities research, our work has the potential to influence and inspire policies to reduce social inequality around the world.

Public procurement is firmly in the spotlight in the Covid-19 crisis. Local authorities (LAs) spend around £100bn (or 47% of their total budget) annually on procurement (IoG,2018). In the Covid-19 crisis, it is crucial that this money delivers the maximum benefit for communities - whether providing for public health (including testing-tracking-tracing responsibilities), for social care (including care home provision), or as one of the key economic levers through which the local economy is to be restarted. Ineffective procurement arrangements present risks for the delivery/continuity of public services in the crisis. Where rapid scaling-up of services is necessary, the limits of some LAs' capacities (and their supply-chains) are often being tested as costs, staff and supply shortages increase. LAs must simultaneously act to protect essential supply-chains where demand has collapsed (e.g. transport, facilities management). Such challenges require smart and agile procurement responses to build strong, effective and efficient relationships and generate positive impacts for local communities. This study will investigate these urgent issues, and how gains might be achieved in the response to Covid-19. The team will examine emerging opportunities to maximise the impact of, and leverage additional value from LA procurement. With extensive involvement and support from key stakeholders, this project will examine what is working well, less well, why, and with what effects and implications. It asks how, and how effectively, are LAs using procurement to address the challenges posed by Covid-19? What are the successes to be celebrated? Where are the tensions that need to be managed? Where is the system at risk of breaking down? What opportunities are there for improved procurement performance? The project will encourage reflection on the ability of the 'procurement ecosystem' to respond in a crisis; clarifying critical-success-factors and pressure-points and discussing what to do next. The project will seek to identify potential leverage from an accumulation of 'positive-sum' gains. Reports here identify a long list of such potential gains, resulting from strategic, entrepreneurial and, particularly, relational approaches that strengthen the system and promote resilience. In the absence of these approaches the system may still operate - but at risk of being substantially underpowered. Impact from the study will derive from important project findings regarding effective crisis strategies; effective 'workarounds' to maintain safety, continuity and resilience (including creative commissioning processes, using the flexibility in existing procurement legislation, and combining complementary capabilities amongst supply-chain partners); and effective ways in which trust, openness and collaboration are emerging to drive innovative ways to aggregate and channel resources.