Aston University Researchers Devote Efforts to Enhance Outcomes for Vulnerable Families and Children within Safeguarding Systems
A research grant has been awarded to researchers at three Universities, including Aston University, to establish a new Centre of Excellence to improve safeguarding outcomes and aspects of the Family Justice system.
Aston Law School’s senior lecturer Stephen Parker, together with researchers from Lancaster and Birmingham City universities, has been awarded £2.09m from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for a £2.5m+ project applying corpus linguistics – the use of computers to study large datasets of language – across a range of contemporary safeguarding issues.
The project is one of six chosen to receive a share of the ESRC’s £12.6m Large Grant investment announced today. The selected projects address a range of pressing regional, national, and international issues, generating real impacts to benefit communities.
The Centre for Corpus Linguistic Approaches to Safeguarding Studies (the CLASS Centre) will be led by Professor Lauren Devine at Lancaster, with Labs at Aston University and Birmingham City University. Stephen Parker will lead the Aston University Lab.
The team will use the grant to create corpus linguistic resources and tools to help understand and improve the experience of vulnerable children and families who face inequalities. The project aims to reduce vulnerable families becoming disproportionately involved in safeguarding processes and will also make recommendations to improve their experience where involvement is necessary.
The project outputs will include a website, a new model for global safeguarding protocols, a toolkit for improving access to justice and listening to family voices in the family justice system, and new tools to improve children’s online safety.
Stephen Parker said:
“It is very exciting that our project has been selected for funding by the ESRC. This new multi-site centre extends into this new field of corpus-linguistic studies. The project brings together established researchers from linguistics, law, and data science. It also creates several new posts for early career researchers and doctoral studies who will work to develop new methods, protocols, and resources to improve aspects of safeguarding and the family justice system.”
ESRC executive chair, Stian Westlake, added:
“These large-scale projects bring together world-class researchers to address important, global issues that affect some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
They are a great example of how the ideas and inspiration of social science researchers can help shape our thinking on long-term societal challenges.”