The evolution of local state-third sector relationships over the past 30 years means many voluntary sector organisations now a central component of public services (see e.g. Rees and Mullins, 2016) with a turn to a relational model of ‘governance’ through which decisions about public services are made on a collaborative consensus-oriented basis (Ansell and Gash, 2008; Osborne, 2010). This raises questions about the extent to which local state-voluntary sector relationships might evolve yet further and how exogenous factors such as public sector austerity, welfare reforms and the drive for public service transformation have affected the ways in which they collaborate with the state at a local level?

This presentation aims to provoke debate around these questions by examining a ‘prefigurative turn’ by three voluntary sector organisations active within local collaborative governance structures and considering the prospects for this to embody a shift in local state-voluntary sector relationships in the longer term. We draw on a five-year study of three ‘early action’ projects in England which aimed to shift in local public sector priorities and resources toward ‘early action’ through collaborative partnership working in different public service settings. Our findings provide some pointers for an alternative model of local state voluntary-sector relationships based on the principles of collaboration and prefiguration. We consider whether the challenges experienced mirror those faced by prefigurative social movements, including the potential for co-option of key actors by ‘corporate’ interests, which can lead them to abandon their radical goals to serve their own interests and maintain power (Boggs, 1977).

Chris Dayson is an Associate Professor in CRESR. Ellen Bennett is a Senior Lecturer in Sheffield Business School. Sarah Pearson is a Professor in CRESR and Director of SHU’s Social and Economic Research Institute. Collectively they formed the core team for the 5 year Evaluation of the Early Action Neighbourhood Fund upon which this presentation draws.

Background/Purpose: High levels of social capital (i.e. the potential resources and opportunities available to an individual accessed through their social and community networks) in adults has been associated with a range of positive outcomes, including reduced depression, increased educational attainment, increased employment, and higher overall quality of life measures. Robert Putnam (2000) argues that a lack of engagement in community activities such as volunteering and attending public meetings has led to a decline in overall social capital, or the connectedness of individuals in a community. This study examines Putnam’s theory by analyzing the relationship between levels of participation in a different community activities and social capital for adult urban, suburban, and rural residents.

Methods: Our study utilized multiple linear regression (n = 12,487) with interaction terms to assess how length of time residing in a community moderates the impact of different levels of community engagement on estimated average social capital.

Results: Higher social capital was observed in high participation groups when compared to low participation in community engagement activities. However, for some, this effect was moderated by the number of years lived in a community and varied across place “type”. Future research should consider how community engagement opportunities are afforded differently across the socioeconomic spectrum and should integrate qualitative data collection to better understand the lived experiences of diverse populations across urban, suburban, and rural places.

Brenda Mathias is a PhD student in Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the impact of urban spaces on youth outcomes, CBPR and asset-based community development. Brenda currently serves as a pre-doctoral fellow with SOULLAB utilizing technology as an empowerment and organizing tool among low-income communities of color. Prior to attending Berkeley, Brenda managed several randomized controlled trials evaluating youth summer jobs in Philadelphia. She has worked on community-led revitalization efforts in Cleveland and conducted service coordination in urban public schools. Brenda holds a bachelors from Temple University and a masters from Case Western Reserve.

This paper examines socio-spatial and housing inequalities with reference to the post-Olympics East Village – the former Athletes’ Village – located in the East London area of Stratford in Newham. The East Village neighbourhood has been routinely praised within the urban policy establishment as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the 2012 Olympics regeneration of East London because of its mixed-tenure housing, including a relatively high percentage of ‘affordable housing’ (social renting, shared ownership and affordable renting), alongside private renters. It is also claimed to be a space of genuine social mixing, including in relation to the rest of East London. This paper examines these claims with reference to policy documents, survey and interviews undertaken with East Village residents. An analysis of policy documents demonstrates that the least marginal of the social housing applicants are selected. The survey data on the East Village residents’ demographic profiles are compared to Stratford and Newham 2011 Census data. This comparison demonstrates that the East Village population is mostly composed of white middle-class professionals, and as such is quite distinct from the ethnically mixed, predominantly working-class Stratford and Newham populations. These social differences are reflected in the interview data which examine how the East Village residents regard their classed and racialised “other”. Rather than social mixing, the housing tenure distribution reinforces the identification of social renters as an interior “other”. Moreover, residents display a ‘mixophobic’ (Bauman, 2003) reaction and feelings of anxiety towards the Stratford residents: an exterior “other”.

The criticism that energy research in the Global North is ‘gender blind’ has inspired emerging scholarship that aims to address various gendered energy inequalities in Northern geographies. Such contributions have investigated the ways in which the lack of energy services in the home can be instrumental in the (re)production of gendered vulnerabilities in and beyond the home. ‘Empowerment’ and ‘emancipation’ have often been used to refer to women’s participation in low-carbon energy transitions and energy related economic activities. The notions of women, care and homemaking have been used to demonstrate capabilities to mitigate everyday energy struggles and injustices. Still, energy and gender research tends to misrecognise gender as a social construct and it conflates it with a masculine/feminine binary. By drawing inspiration from critical feminist scholarship, the presentation elucidates the gendered politics of energy precarity by linking the domestic and public geometries of power. The notion of energy precarity is employed to scrutinise how gendered vulnerability to energy deprivation is induced through political processes.

Saska Petrova is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Environment, Education and Development, and Director of the MSc in Environmental Governance at the University of Manchester. Her work focuses on how communities and local people are affected by low-carbon transitions. One of her research foci is on energy poverty and vulnerability. She has undertaken research projects in Europe (Greece, the UK, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine and North Macedonia), Africa (South African Republic) and Asia (China). Findings from her research have been integrated in various policy documents and strategies including the UK National Union of Students Welfare and Student Rights Strategy. Saska has published extensively on these issues, including a monograph on Communities in Transition (Routledge, 2014) as well as a number of articles in leading scientific journals such as the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Environment and Planning A, Urban Studies, Geoforum, Area, Geojournal and Energy Policy. Her work has been highly cited and it has received various awards, including the 2019 Jim Lewis Prize of the European Urban and Regional Studies journal. She has been involved in several interdisciplinary research projects funded by the ESRC, EPRSC, Royal Geographical Society, Cheshire Lehmann Fund and Higher Education Academy. She also has an extensive professional background as a public advocate and consultant for a range of government institutions and think tanks.

This paper will explore the use of Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), a form of anti-social behaviour policy introduced through the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. PSPOs are introduced by a local authority against a designated area, containing specific prohibitions and requirements that seek to regulate the behaviour of all public space users therein. If found to be breaching a PSPO, a potential perpetrator can receive a fixed-penalty notice of up to £100, or a fine not exceeding £1,000 if found guilty of a summary conviction in the Magistrates Court.

The focus of this paper, deriving from an element of the findings from my doctoral research into PSPOs, explores how the environment from which a PSPO is introduced affects the methods of enforcement that is utilised by both the local authority and the front-line workers who are responsible for policy implementation. Discussion will focus on, for example, the divergent approaches taken in different environments, such as distinctions between town and city centre enforcement and the type of enforcement utilised in neighbourhood environments, which represents an attempt to engage with different communities and varying anti-social behaviour being demonstrated.

Using the capabilities approach as its main organising framework, this paper presents the findings of a recent qualitative study into the lived experiences of a group of individuals living in privately-run hostels in the North of England. Despite all living in relatively similar and objectively poor housing conditions, the study found much diversity in terms of the ways in which the residents perceived their housing conditions and the impacts of these on their exercise of key functions. This highlights the highly complex nature of the relationship between housing conditions and well-being, particularly in relation to disadvantaged and marginalised individuals. In seeking to understand the diversity found, the concept of homelessness pathways was employed. The pathways lens had limited explanatory value on its own but proved highly useful when considered alongside other concepts from the housing literature, particularly those relating to the nature of individuals’ social networks, their relationships with substances and the degree of ‘fit’ between their housing circumstances and personal needs and wants. The paper has both normative and practical implications for responses to homelessness.

Biography

Dr Adele Irving is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria University. She specialises in homelessness research and has undertaken a substantial number of applied research and evaluation projects in the area. Adele has a particular interest in the relationship between individual biographies and routes into, through and out of homelessness. Adele’s PhD thesis discussed the experiences of people living in privately run Houses in Multiple Occupation in Newcastle and other parts of the North East. In 2019, she won the Housing Studies Association’s Valerie Kern Prize for the best research paper produced by an early career researcher based on her PhD findings. Adele also has a particular interest in the use of innovative participatory and action research methodologies (such as participatory mapping, aural testimonies, auto-photography and peer-led research) to collect data and disseminate findings and the impacts of these methodologies of understandings of and responses to key social issues. She has successfully used these methods in a range of projects, including Imaging Homelessness, Sounding Off and PEER. In 2016, Adele and her colleague Oliver Moss won the Local Area Research + Intelligence Association prize for the ‘Best Presentation of Local Area Research’ for Imaging Homelessness. Adele is currently leading a piece of participatory research with individuals who have experienced homelessness or been at risk of this in Newcastle, as part of a larger project with Crisis and Newcastle City Council to support Newcastle to be the first city to ‘end homelessness’ within the next ten years.

Roz is the managing director of co-design digital inclusion and innovation team, mhabitat.

She has 25 years experience of leading social, health and digital innovations across the NHS, Local Government and the Third Sector. Previous roles include Director of Social Inclusion at Good Things Foundation, Director of Localities and Communities at New Economics Foundation and Managing Director of UK Charity Leader of the Year, Sheffield Flourish. Roz lives with type 1 diabetes and was awarded the accolade of one of the 50 foremost Patient Leaders by the HSJ.