Publications

Hardly a month goes by without another horror story in the press and media about a disturbing state of affairs in our health and care services. The prosecutions at Winterbourne View, the massive collapse and public sector rescue of Southern Cross are symptomatic of a national care service system in crisis. Is there a democratically…

Despite sustained public demand for parties to act, the environment has been subject to limited issue salience in UK state-wide elections. This article uses qualitative and quantitative methods to explore party politicisation of the environment in regional elections 1998–2011. Contrary to earlier suggestions, the present findings indicate that multi-level systems may facilitate increasing environmental issue…

Electoral politics is a decisive formative and programmatic phase in the development of mixed economy approaches to social protection. This study examines the main issues and policy formulation concerning the role of the third sector in social protection in the manifestos of British political parties in the context of the Westminster elections and at regional…

Despite a select group of urban centres generating a disproportionate amount of global economic output, significant attention is being devoted to the impact of urban-economic processes on interstitial spaces lying between metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, there remains a noticeable silence in city-region debate concerning how rural spaces are conceptualised, governed and represented. In this paper we…

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range…

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range…

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range…

Traditionally, minority nationalist parties (MNPs) have employed the notion of Europe in order to advance an alternative to centralized administration within the unitary state. This study examines whether earlier claims of MNPs’ repositioning on the European Union (EU) are supported by a discourse analysis of manifestos in UK meso-elections. The findings confirm a significant shift…

Cymorth Cymru’s members working across the care and support sector have long been keen for Cymorth to extend its services to support their work in delivering care. Running alongside this, we have had an Inquiry into Residential Care chaired by Mark Drakeford, which called for a greater role for not for profit care providers and…

In this report we outline the progress of the evaluation during the past year (August 2012 to July 2013). We also provide details about Stage II of the evaluation design, which has largely involved the collection of detailed information about the implementation of the Foundation Phase in forty-one schools and ten funded non-maintained settings from…