This project is part of a major Joseph Rowntree Foundation programme focussing on the links between poverty and ethnicity across the UK. It explores the potential of social networks to tackle poverty within Black and minority ethnic communities in the UK.

This research aims to develop a better understanding of how networks within and between diverse communities support or hinder people’s capacity and opportunities to cope with and move away from poverty. It will explore how networks are maintained, accessed, and used to gain employment or sustain businesses.

The research is being undertaken with diverse communities in Birmingham, Liverpool and Cumbria. The research team is led by Angus McCabe, Third Sector Research Centre.

Project summary

Contact: Angus McCabe

Releasing the Community Investment potential of social housing organisations

August 2012 - ongoing

TSRC is conducting a partnership project with HACT to develop work on social impact, localism and community investment.

The housing sector is currently experiencing unprecedented change in capital investment, inspection and regulation, and policies such as welfare reform and localism. The project will enable HACT to respond to the changing needs of sector, and help housing organisations to harness their benefit to neighbourhoods and communities.

Project details

Research contact: David Mullins

The role of grassroots arts activities in communities

January 2012

This scoping study highlights the significant and positive contribution that grassroots arts activities make to the development of Civil Society. The research was carried out by TSRC in partnership with the Universities of Exeter and Glamorgan and Voluntary Arts, and with financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities programme.

More details
Research contact: Jenny Phillimore

Connecting the dots: the potential for self-help housing to address homelessness

February 2011

Self-help housing may offer the potential to provide joined-up solutions to the problems of homelessness, empty properties and long term unemployment. It involves groups of local people bringing empty properties back into use. Crisis commissioned this report from TSRC to explore how self-help housing approaches might be adapted to help tackle homelessness and associated training and employment needs, and to understand the barriers preventing its wider take-up.

More information and report
Research contact: Simon Teasdale

The effect of twins and multiple birth on families and their living standards

March 2010

Professor Steve McKay, of the Third Sector Research Centre, worked with the Twin and Multiple Birth Association (TAMBA) on research into the costs and implications of multiple births. This report, compiled for TAMBA, shows that parents of multiple birth children are more likely than other parents to experience both material deprivation and family breakdown.

See report for more details (PDF, 3.59MB)
Research contact: Steve McKay

Alternative approaches to capacity building – practices in the public and private sectors

August 2009

TSRC researchers at the University of Birmingham and Middlesex University produced research for Capacity Builders to examine alternative practices in capacity building found in the public and private sectors and how these can be used to benefit third sector organisations (TSOs).

Report
Research contact: Fergus Lyon

The rural social economy: surviving the credit crunch

January 2009

This report by Angus McCabe examines the effect of the recession on social enterprise in a rural economy, through a case study of a community owned village shop.

Read case study (PDF, 22KB)
Contact: Angus McCabe