Context of the research Drug and/or alcohol misuse by a parent can be harmful to children and wider family members. Because of this, parents who misuse drugs or alcohol often receive health and social care services to help them reduce their misuse and to protect their children. Having another parent or carer who does not misuse drugs or alcohol can be protective for children. However, little is understood about how to best support these parents and carers who are often overlooked regarding support. Our project will work closely with these 'affected' parents/carers and their children as well as with health and social care professionals involved in their care to develop an intervention which specifically supports to the non-substance misusing parent/carer. Aims and objectives In our project we will: - Map what support is currently available for families affected by a parent's drug or alcohol misuse to find out what works well and what does not. We will do this by working in groups with different health and social care professionals across the North East of England. - We will also ask children who are affected by parental drug or alcohol misuse and their parents/carers who do not misuse drugs or alcohol who they think can provide them with the most useful support, including family members, friends and local volunteer groups. - We will ask the non drug or alcohol-misusing parents and carers how best to help them support children affected by parental alcohol or drug misuse. - We will combine what we learnt and share this with parents/carers and health and social care professionals in workshops. We will work in partnership to develop a new way of helping parents and carers in their caregiving role. This will be the 'Safe Space Intervention'. Potential application and benefits The Safe Space intervention will be delivered to parents/carers of children aged 0-17 years (inclusive) who live within families affected by parental drug or alcohol misuse. Whilst these families often have a range of health and social care needs, we think that families who receive 'early help' and children's social care services will be the most likely group to receive the intervention as there is greatest need in this population. The Safe Space intervention aims to benefit children (improving their emotional wellbeing); their caregivers (improving their emotional wellbeing, quality of life and awareness of parental drug or alcohol misuse); the family (family functioning) and the professionals that support them (reducing the need for health and social care services including safeguarding services and increased confidence when supporting families affected).

THE PROBLEM Public health prevention today faces a serious challenge: new research suggests that breathing high levels of air pollutants at critical points in our lives, particularly in early life, can lead to significant cognitive disorders, including dementia. This causal link, however, from a public health standpoint, is not the primary challenge. Instead, the challenge is in figuring out how best to prevent it. What new research tentatively suggests, and here is the real public health challenge, is that the factors that account for which populations are most likely to develop air-pollution-based cognitive disorders has less to do with 'how' they live and more to do with 'where' they live. In other words, it appears that, from a prevention standpoint, the complex social and environmental systems in which certain populations live makes air pollution a health vulnerability for them. Air pollution is a form of cognitive health inequality. What is not clear, however, is specifically 'how' these complex systems make air pollution a cognitive health vulnerability? From policies for traffic management and urban congestion to the un-equitable sharing of benefits derived from clean air strategies, we do not entirely understand the pathways by which the social and environmental determinants of air pollution lead to cognitive disorders. In turn, therefore, we do not entirely know how to effectively intervene into these complex systems. In other words, from a primary prevention standpoint it is not clear which air policies or interventions best mitigate against the negative impact these determinants have on cognitive health, particularly for the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations in the UK's major conurbations. Hence the purpose of InSPIRE. OUR COMPLEXITY APPROACH InSPIRE will develop innovative primary prevention strategies for improving air quality, so that where one lives in the UK is no longer a cognitive health vulnerability. InSPIRE (which is comprised of 22 academics working across 9 universities with a network of partnerships) will engage in a highly ambitious research programme using the latest developments in systems science methods for public health to do the following: 1.Develop a cutting-edge UK air pollution model (1970-2020) of what is known as PM2.5. These air pollutants are hazardous because they enter the bloodstream and travel to the brain to cause cognitive impairment. 2.Work with the Dementias Platform to link our air pollution model to the cognitive health outcomes of three different highly regard UK cohorts. 3.Work with regional and national partners to evaluate previous and current clean air strategies (1970 - 2020) to identify the most successful (for our cohorts) at mitigating the negative impact place has on cognitive health. 4.Create a catalogue of these policy strategies and evaluate them further for 4 conurbations: London, Birmingham, Tyne-Wear and greater Manchester. 5.Use these results to produce high quality policy information and strategies to inform end-users on preventing air-pollution-based cognitive disorders and health inequalities. OUR TOOLKIT/SIMULATION PLATFORM InSPIRE will also launch an online evaluation toolkit and scenario simulation platform similar to the UK Multiple Deprivation Index and 2050 DECC Energy Calculator. With impact at the forefront of our partnership with the public and stakeholders, our simulation platform and toolkit will be immediately fit for purpose. Additionally, central and local end-users will be able to fine tune their platform as the world changes around them. Linking with national or local data and regional services, they will also be empowered to determine what will work and what is cost effective in the short and long term. Together, InSPIRE will help mitigate the effect of air pollution on cognitive health, both opening prospects and closing pathways to this cognitive barrier for the good of our population.

COVID-19 has transformed city life: we now urgently need to develop imaginative ideas and creative practices to understand and address its impact on how we live and work in cities. Performance theory and practice offer innovative, proven, yet under-explored means to achieve this. This project will provide new models for understanding and practising city life, helping people cope with social distancing, both practically and emotionally. Working with strategic decision-makers in Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle City Councils (confirmed), we will investigate everyday innovations (social performances) and artistic interventions (aesthetic performances), to understand how performance can reimagine and facilitate city life in times of social distancing, and how performance theory and analysis might contribute to more nuanced, creative and sustainable strategies and practices for response and recovery across five urgent areas: social cohesion, new behaviours, community resilience, perceptions of environment, and crisis management. Working with artists, arts venues and officers from hazard mitigation, sustainability and resilience, the project will lead to new understandings of the place and function of performance, broker creative thinking on response and recovery, and make strategic recommendations for arts strategy, pandemic planning and hazard mitigation policy. Impacts will be scaled, primarily, through Core Cities, a network of eleven UK cities, and arts strategy organisations. This project builds on the investigators' recent work in New Orleans, which led the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to fundamentally change their hazard mitigation policy and practice, and to significant changes in strategies for major arts organisations (www.performingcityresilience.com)

The aim of this project is to develop and test through real-world research, a digital platform and toolkit that will enable members of the public to engage with local councils and other organisations more effectively in the research, planning and design of the urban environment. The specific domain of this project is people's experiences of mobility and access to the urban environment, and how this changes with age. The project is a collaboration with City Councils in the Northeast Region, and Newcastle's' Age Friendly city initiative. Through VoiceNorth will engage members of the public in the project as co-researchers and co-designers, to collect a body of quantitative and qualitative data on older people's experiences of mobility in the built environment, and to co-design digital tools, information and services to enhance that experience. To achieve this we will design and develop a toolkit of digital sensors to capture evidence and experiences from older people's journeys through and social interactions within the city centre. We will combine this evidence with social research data through interactive architectural visualisations which will support citizens and stakeholder in participatory design of the age friendly city. We will also develop a participatory design platform which will allow members of the general public to access, comment, and vote on design issues, and to add their own experiences of access and the built environment. This extended public engagement in the research and design activities will offer a new model of public engagement in civic decision making. The toolkit and platform will be validated through the design of and deployment of digital interventions in the city. We will also document our findings for policy makers and other stakeholders regionally and nationally.

Globally, green infrastructure is recognised as an important tool that can address a range of interwoven benefits in urban areas such as: reducing flood risk, reducing urban heat island effects, reducing water pollution, improving air quality, reducing noise, providing amenity provision and well-being. The challenges these benefits address are projected to intensify in the context of climate change and urban population growth. The potential to achieve these benefits is made difficult by the traditional models for delivering green infrastructure and complexities such as: understanding who benefits and hence who pays; valuing the benefits; the appropriate spatial scale for implementation; incentives and enforcement for its implementation and maintenance; and how its delivery interacts with existing infrastructure in urban areas. Here we aim to identify, investigate and pilot tangible design, funding, implementation and operating models for green infrastructure which can be replicated or adapted internationally. An initial review of funding and delivery mechanism for green infrastructure will be undertaken from an academic and practitioners' viewpoint, drawing upon a range of literature sources. Simultaneously, laneways in Melbourne deemed suitable for 'greening' will be co-designed and implemented with local communities. An evaluation of the potential multiple benefits of laneways in the Melbourne will include social, economic and environmental benefits. An example of how these benefits can be quantified will be conducted in the context of flood risk by coupling Newcastle University's pluvial flood risk model of Melbourne that can illustrate the flood mitigation effect of green infrastructure with ARUP's economic tool, Floodlite. Stakeholder mapping of the beneficiaries, coupled with a conceptual map of how benefits flow, will inform the proposal of alternative business models for funding the delivery of laneways. These various elements will then be brought together to inform the development of a digital community funding platform for green infrastructure; this will be complimented by a set of recommendations and non-technical summary guide to green infrastructure funding. The process will be repeatable and transferable to enable communities to support green infrastructures in their neighbourhoods. Joint funding from NERC and Arup (through their Global Research Challenge fund) will bring together teams from the scientific, government and practitioner communities and enable them to integrate the range of skills required to deliver this work.