How NatCen's new Centre for Children and Families will take research to a new level

The inaugural conference of the Centre for Children and Families took place on 27 June at City, University in London.

The event brought together researchers from the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), academia and the voluntary sector discussing issues and potential solutions around inequality and education right from the early years to education and employment post-16 in the UK.

The after-shocks of Covid-19 will be felt for a long time to come and a range of research data, collected from surveys such as the Study for Early Education and Development (SEED), Mental Health of Children and Young People (MHCYP) and also the cohort studies commissioned by the Department for Education will help us assess the longer term impacts of the loss of education. Families and Children are at the heart of all of this.

NatCen’s Centre for Children and Families is already involved in a range of exciting and ambitious research projects such as SEED, which follows children’s lives, their attendance and attainment in early years education and school from birth to age 11 and beyond.

It has collected rich data from children, their families, childcare settings and their teachers. Similarly, the evaluation of A Better Start, a five year lottery-funded initiative to help local areas to better support families with the early years development of their children, will be able to give us insights into what works in helping families and will also enhance our understanding of place-based programmes and evaluations.

Our team is also working on a range of evaluations funded by the Education Endowment Fund, the Youth Futures Foundation and Defra, such as the Nature Friendly Schools’ programme, on supporting children in maths and science and the early years’ workforce.

This new Centre is taking NatCen’s existing work on children and families to a new level.

Going forward we want to reach out to partners in the voluntary sector, academia and government much more and ensure that the findings of our research are accessible.

We want to collaborate with partners from all these organisations to carry out research that is relevant to and impactful for children and families and we want to make our research more inclusive from the start.

This includes taking forward the new opportunities and lessons of doing research online. Moreover, we want to link the experience of children and families into the big topics of the day such as climate change, equality and diversity and mental health, so we can provide sound evidence for policy makers to base decisions on for improving society.