The news in brief

News from June and July from the School of Social Policy.

• Three School members have been nominated for HEFi Teaching and Learning Awards.  Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton was nominated in the categories of Outstanding Student Support and Inclusive Educator. Deputy Learning and Teaching Manager Katherine Burley was nominated in the Outstanding Student Support category. The NHS Leadership Academy Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Programme team, led by Janine Turner, were also nominated for an award. Congratulations to all. 
• The BRACE Rapid Evaluation Centre and Policy Innovation and Evaluation Research Unit – both funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) – have published initial findings from an early evaluation of the Government’s Children and Young People’s Mental Health Implementation Programme. Initial findings showed that the new mental health support teams in schools and colleges are widely welcomed, but gaps in children’s mental health provision remain.
• Deborah Davidson from the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC), along with colleagues from the University of Manchester, scoped and conducted a formative evaluation of NHS England &NHS Improvement’s Culture and Leadership Programme (CLP). The report is available to read online, and a presentation on the report, given at the Health Services Research UK conference, can be found on Youtube. 
• Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) Director Nando Sigona has been awarded over € 21,000 of EUniWell seed funds for the project ‘Migration and Diversity in European Cities (MADEINEUROPE) Winter School’. The event will run in January 2022 for 4 weeks.
• Dr Will Leggett has published an open access article in the journal Critical Policy Studies: ‘Can Mindfulness Really Change the World? The Political Character of Meditative Practices’. The article looks beyond neoliberal forms of ‘McMindfulness’, identifying how meditation might cultivate more critical and democratic forms of consciousness and action. It was viewed 500 times in its first month, and highlighted as ‘required reading’ by the progressive thinktank and campaign network Compass.
• The Centre for Household Asset Management (CHASM) held an ‘Open House’ event to share fascinating current research and for the audience to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the Centre’s future plans and strategic direction. 
  
• HSMC's Professor Russell Mannion, with colleagues at the Universities of Surrey, Cardiff and Macquarie, is being funded by NIHR HSDR to undertake research on unprofessional behaviour in health care settings.  
• Birmingham Fellow Dr Jennifer Allsopp has co-authored a report for the European Parliament on the EU Approach to Migration in the Mediterranean, which was launched at the LIBE Committee last month. She has also co-authored an op ed for World Refugee Day in her role as a Senior Visiting Fellow with UNU-CPR.
• IRiS’s Community Sponsorship research team have had two open access papers recently published: Economic self-reliance or social relations? What works in refugee integration? Learning from resettlement programmes in Japan and the UK, and “I have Felt so Much Joy”: The Role of Emotions in Community Sponsorship of Refugees. 
• Congratulations to Dr Val Sylvester, who has successfully completed her PhD.  Val’s research explored the experiences of Caribbean migrant women migrating to the UK and US in the 1950s and 1960s and the title of her thesis was “Intergenerational Experiences of Migration and Settlement: African Caribbean Women UK and US Perspectives”.
• HSMC's Professor Iestyn Williams, along with colleagues, has published a paper in the BMJ: 'Is spurious penicillin allergy a major public health concern only in high-income countries?'
• The School of Social Policy is launching its own LinkedIn page to share news, events, research and opportunities with alumni, staff, students and the wider community. Please browse and share!