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Newham Council Fellowships

We are pleased to announce new Policy Fellowship opportunities with London Borough of Newham

Background

Newham is one of the fastest growing, young, and diverse boroughs in the country. With 351,000 people living in Newham, it is the third fastest growing borough in London. Over seven in ten residents are from Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse communities. However, there are deep rooted inequalities, with a quarter of neighbourhoods in the borough the most deprived in the UK. After housing costs, almost half of Newham’s residents live in poverty.  

UCL Public Policy is offering support for up to three policy fellowships (on a flexible part to full-time basis) to collaborate with the Public Health and Research and Inclusion teams at Newham Council. These policy fellowships present a valuable opportunity for UCL researchers to deepen their insights into local government, broaden their professional networks, and enhance their skills and expertise in academic-policy engagement. Ethics approval is required for all three projects and is in process.

Funded through Research England's QR Policy Support Fund (QR-PSF), these fellowships will span three months, from April to July. By participating in these fellowships, researchers can gain hands-on experience in policy development and contribute meaningfully to community-oriented initiatives. Deadline: Monday 18th March 17:00 GMT

Each fellow will work closely with Newham Council on one of the following collaborative projects:

  1. Citizen Assemblies 

  2. Improving residents' ability to manage benefits and credits’

  3. Mental Health in South Asian Women 

Required skills:

  1. Excellent research and analytic skills, with demonstrated experience or transferable skills in designing and carrying out feasibility studies, and translating research findings to other contexts.
  2. Expertise and experience in using research as a means of informing and contributing towards policy development.
  3. Ability to operate effectively, openly and collaboratively within sensitive political contexts.
  4. Ability to demonstrate neutrality and impartiality while navigating competing stakeholder interests.
  5. Excellent communication skills and ability to effectively engage with people from different backgrounds and sectors, and at different levels of seniority. Particularly important are writing skills and proven communications experience.
  6. Understanding of the academic policy-engagement environment, and an ability to grasp project priorities quickly.
  7. Ability to work proactively, managing and prioritising your own workload, while managing contingencies between multiple project stakeholders.


1.    Citizen Assemblies  

Brief
The London Borough of Newham is seeking a researcher to explore how citizen assemblies, and wider participatory democracy approaches, can drive impactful policy change within the resource constraints and uncertainties facing local authorities. 

Newham Council has made a manifesto commitment to use citizen assemblies to involve residents in key decisions and has untaken previous work through a CAPE Policy Fellow to understand how to do this. The work with the CAPE Policy Fellow explored how to include marginalised voices in the policy making process better, but this didn’t consider cost constraints. We wish to build upon the learnings from this policy fellowship to understand how to effectively hold large-scale assemblies with serve budget cuts and uncertain central government funding.

In Autumn 2024 Newham Council plans to hold a Citizen Assembly focused on making the borough disability friendly. This fellowship seeks to understand how citizen assemblies, and wider participatory democracy interventions, can be adapted to deliver people powered and actionable policy and service change within local authorities facing major resource constraints.

This fellowship will review Newham's context and past citizen assemblies’ models to understand the barriers and opportunities for people-powered policymaking. It will propose recommendations for adaptations that could make future assemblies more affordable, while maintaining meaningful participation and policy impact.

Context

  • Newham faces a multi-million funding gap and service cuts from 2023-2026
  • They have held citizen assemblies previously on climate change, aging, transport
  • We have a manifesto pledge in the Building a Fairer Newham corporate plan to continue assemblies on key issues
  • Past assemblies had limited policy impact and faced resourcing issues

Policy background
Newham Council plans to hold a Citizen Assembly in Autumn 2024 focused on making the borough disability friendly. This aligns with our Building a Fairer Newham corporate priorities on a healthier Newham & ageing well and people powered Newham & widening participation. Whilst we are looking for general recommendations on how to develop effective citizen assemblies, rather than specific recommendations on how to develop an assembly on a disability-friendly borough, we welcome any ideas from the fellow.

Ahead of the Citizen Assembly we are keen to have a fellow propose models on how to effectively run a large-scale assembly with budgetary constraints. At Newham we have a continued commitment to engagement and co-production and are keen to ensure that the findings from this Citizen Assembly lead to improved outcomes for our residents. 

Role description & key responsibilities
The fellow will work with the research and inclusion team to review past approaches to citizen assemblies held in Newham and for the fellow to propose models for for Newham that drives policy impact within budget limitations. 

Key aspects include:

  • Review of past approaches and lessons learned in Newham
  • Exploration of what works in successful citizen assemblies outside of the borough
  • Develop suggestions for a new model

2.    Improving residents' ability to manage benefits and credits

Brief
Increasing benefits take-up is one of the few levers available to local governments to respond to the cost-of-living crisis and support residents in financial hardship. There are a range of programmes and activities in place to close the gap between the number of people eligible for benefits and those who take them up. 

We know that managing benefits, particularly the Universal Credit Journal, noticing and responding to over and underpayments, and understanding payment changes are all big challenges for residents who are on benefits. We are keen to understand the experiences of these residents, and for the fellow to develop recommendations that will show how the Council can support and build capability in these residents to ensure they feel confident in the management of their benefits.

Newham is looking for a researcher to develop policy and practice proposals to support residents in managing the benefits system. Areas for the fellow to explore include:
•    Supporting people to access and manage their universal credit journal
•    Helping understand and respond to changes in payment 
•    Helping people to notice and take action on over and/or underpayment

Policy background
The Council has an active Cost of Living action plan overseen by senior leaders and partners. The recommendations from the fellowship would be integrated into the Council’s Cost of Living action plan and taken forward by the relevant teams. Examples of the work Newham has been doing to support its residents in the cost-of-living crisis can be seen here.

We are keen to amplify the work done by the fellow. The fellowship would generate insights that could be shared with other places as part of the Centre for Health and Care Equity and in the Council’s participation in the Pan-London Cost of Living leads network. The Council’s cost of living lead is also the Association of Directors of Public Health London Cost of Living lead and so the recommendations would be shared with the wider public health system across London. 

Role description & key responsibilities
The fellow will develop a set of recommendations that the Council and our partners, particularly voluntary, community and faith organisations can pilot, bounded by the resource realities at a local level. 

We anticipate the work for this fellowship to include desk research of what is already done to support people with their benefit management generally, as well as what works to support people to manage the specific Universal Credit system and what works to manage analogous systems and processes. We also are keen to understand if experiences with maintaining benefits are felt universally, or if some people have more challenging experiences.


3.    Mental Health in South Asian Women

Brief
Newham Council partnered with Blossom Place, a local voluntary sector organisation, to find out more about the barriers and enablers to South Asian women seeking support for their mental and emotional well-being. Blossom Place collected data from over 250 women. 

The dataset is detailed and rich – and Blossom Place has done what it can to pull out key insights, but we know there is more to be done. We are keen for a fellow to do a thorough analysis of the data to allow us to better understand the experiences of South Asian women in the borough.

Policy background
Insights from the database will inform the policy and practice around supporting South Asian women with their emotional and mental well-being. This would be part of the wider transformation of mental health services underway in the East London Foundation Trust and the Council services. It could also feed into work underway around faith-informed psychological services. 

The project would also generate insights that could be shared with other places as part of the Centre for Health and Care Equity. For this project you will be working with the Public Health team.

Role description & key responsibilities 
Newham is looking for someone who can apply robust and diverse qualitative and quantitative methods to this rich database and draw out insights in three areas:

  • Needs around emotional and mental wellbeing for South Asian women 
  • Detailed analysis of barriers and enablers for a range of demographic characteristics 
  • Recommendations for potential changes in practice to support South Asian women. 

Desirable skills:

  • Understanding of mental health experiences of people from ethnic minority backgrounds


Ways of working
The fellowships will be remote with some meetings taking place at Newham’s office. The successful applicants will be willing to embrace and contribute to the fast-paced work culture at Newham. The fellows will report to their named project supervisor.

About you
These secondments are open to eligible academic and research staff at UCL Grade 6, 7 or 8 (and CL7 and CL8). They are offered on a flexible part-time to full-time basis for three months, from the end of April (earlier if possible) until the end of July. Funding must be spent before the 31st July. Eligible applicants must have a UCL employment contract that extends beyond the secondment period. Please contact the Policy Fellowship Coordinator (alice.tofts@ucl.ac.uk) if you are interested in this opportunity but you are not eligible. 

To apply
Please complete the online application form to apply for this opportunity. If you would like to apply to more than one project, please submit two application forms, submitting different answers to question five.  If you have difficulty in accessing or using this form please contact Dr Alice Tofts, Policy Fellowship Coordinator, UCL Public Policy (alice.tofts@ucl.ac.uk). If you have any questions please take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions page. 

We particularly welcome applications from black and minority ethnic, female and disabled/neurodivergent candidates.

Top ranked candidates will be invited to an informal interview on Tuesday 26 March. 

Please note information provided in the application form will be shared with Newham to assess your suitability for the award. For more information on data sharing please see the UCL Staff Privacy Statement here and UCL statement on tasks in the public interest here. 

Application Deadline: Monday 18th March 17:00 GMT