The 'Find your village' network: Programme Development Grant preparation

Preparing application to NIHR PGfAR

This research aims to enable and support marginalised children and families with migrational heritage to thrive. We believe answers to the above inequalities can be found in the undervalued traditions, cultures, knowledge and experiences of our global communities. We aim to show how community groups, the voluntary sector and government agencies can all contribute to social and environmental change that builds a ‘village’. We believe they can achieve this by coordinating to activate ‘latent assets’ - assets present in families’ and communities’ heritage and experience, but currently hidden, suppressed or silenced that will reduce inequality and marginalisation, and improve outcomes for children, families, communities and neighbourhoods, and foster linkage between communities and agencies, health and wider sectors.

This NIHR call https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/nihr-programme-development-grants-and-the-royal-college-of-paediatrics-and-child-health-rcpch-highlight-for-child-health-and-wellbeing-research-competition-brief/34816 offers the opportunity to build a national team around inequality-reducing investment in maternity and early childhood.
Our aim is to reduce inequalities in nutrition, health & wellbeing, early child development, youth outcomes, community/neighbourhood networks and partnership with services for families with migrant heritage. We will use this opportunity to build a collaborative team and programme that draws from research in Bristol, London, Bradford and Leicester. This will build on examples of maternity and early childhood peer support approaches such as ‘Find your village’ across the country seeking social and environmental change.
Our research is designed to construct a persuasive NIHR PDG application about changes in policy, practice and commissioning that involve, resource and connect services with communities with migrant heritage to build trust and share responsibility:
• We will integrate experience from the collaborating centres
• We will use the ‘Born in Bradford’ prospective birth cohort (with a highly diverse and migrant population) to explore possible associations of maternal ethnicity, migration status and wellbeing/stress/isolation in pregnancy with pre-school child learning and wellbeing measures
• We will prepare for use of the national e-Child database
• We will undertake public involvement meetings to discuss our proposed approaches.