The overarching goal of the project is to generate an enduring and world-class step-change in the transdisciplinary capability of the UK marine policy stakeholder and research community to implement diverse values for decision making and support the sustainable management of the UK's marine resources. Diverse values refer to the many dimensions of value including economic values, social and cultural values, aesthetic values, and natural values and how they might be accounted for in decision-making frameworks such as instrumental values, intrinsic values and relational values. Marine environments and human well-being are inextricably linked through complex and multi-layered socio-ecological systems that span terrestrial, coastal and ocean domains. While this complexity is widely acknowledged in theory, current models of marine resource management practice (which themselves are highly complex, multi-scaled and interconnected) do not adequately adopt the necessary transdisciplinary approaches to use diverse values or have the means to align them to decision making and policy development. The transition to transdisciplinarity and diverse values is a challenge faced by marine science and policy communities worldwide and is acknowledged as a global science priority for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (UNESCO 2019). It is a cross-cutting challenge which affects all marine management priorities. The inclusion of diverse values, particularly of a qualitative nature, into UK marine management processes is crucial, but at present is outside the experience, capability and comfort zone of many institutions and individuals in the marine management research and practitioner community. The aims of this project drive an innovative agenda of transformational research that both significantly advances our understanding of values-based marine management and which provides actionable tools and approaches that can feed directly into contemporary marine management practice in the UK. Working across three test study sites of Portsmouth / Newhaven, Upper Severn Estuary and the Shetland Islands the aims of this research are: 1. to generate a new conceptual basis for transdisciplinary marine management and research that allows multiple and diverse human values to be incorporated into marine management in the UK. 2. to synthesise existing ecological and economic data with new diverse values approaches (collected using methods from largely outside the marine community) to produce groundbreaking transdisciplinary and holistic understanding of how coastal communities value marine resources and their management. 3. to evaluate, through on-the-ground testing, how diverse values can: 1) be used to unlock the potential of ocean literacy to become an actionable policy tool; and 2) be integrated into marine governance institutions and practices to unlock a step-change in sustainable outcomes. 4. to create and implement a national-scale transition plan to support the UK marine management and research community to mainstream transdisciplinary approaches. A key aim of the project is to create a step-change in the capability of the UK marine sector to consider diverse values and the transdisciplinary approaches needed to operationalise those values. We have approached this by developing a research programme that is focused on co-constructing how diverse values can be used in policy and practice by developing transdisciplinary working practices both within academia and more broadly with diverse stakeholders. The aim of the project is to create a change in the practices of marine management in the UK. The project legacy will be an increased understanding and implementation of diverse values into marine policy and decision making and the creation of transition plans for institutions to facilitate embedding transdisciplinary practices into the operations of organisations.

Our project focuses on a previously neglected area of research: how does providing care for grandchildren impact on the health and wellbeing of grandparents? Promoting the health and wellbeing of older people is a critical policy issue as the population ages, while social, economic and demographic changes across Europe point to an increasing role for grandparents in providing childcare support to families. Despite competing pressures on older workers to remain in the workforce for longer and to provide care to frail family members, there are additional pressures on grandparents to provide childcare. This is thought to be due to policies encouraging more mothers into the paid workforce, increases in rates of family breakdown and single motherhood, and financial pressures on families. This vital economic and social role is largely overlooked or taken for granted by policymakers, and the health impacts on older people of taking on these childcare roles are not known. This issue affects millions of people. There are 14 million grandparents in the UK, many of working age: 25% of grandparents over the age of 50 are under 60, and 40 per cent are under 65. In Britain, 17% of grandparents with a grandchild under 16 provide intensive levels of childcare of at least ten hours a week and around one in thirty provides full time care to, or lives with a grandchild. Prior research suggests those grandparents with 'primary care' responsibilities for a grandchild or who undertake intensive grandparenting roles are often among the most disadvantaged and in the poorest health. However, since this is mostly drawn from cross-sectional data, it is not known whether or to what extent this is due to cumulative disadvantages throughout the life course or to the impact of grandchild care per se. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms and causal pathways between grandchild care and grandparent health and wellbeing is needed. Earlier findings on the relationship between grandchild care and grandparent health are inconclusive and researchers have suggested that this may be because this relationship is likely to vary by socio-economic circumstances with those in the most vulnerable groups being the most adversely affected. Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we will examine the long-term social, health and economic determinants of grandparents' current health and wellbeing status, focusing on the intervening role of grandchild care. We will focus on understanding how cumulative advantage and disadvantage interacts with grandchild care to affect grandparent health and wellbeing. Using the life history information collected we will be able to explore the relationship between different life experiences and grandparents' current health and wellbeing. For example, we will be able to capture lifetime experiences such as time spent in institutional care as children, with single parents, periods of poor health as children and with ill-health and disability as adults, periods of unemployment, experiences of divorce, widowhood and single parenthood, periods of partner's ill health/disability, and frequent house moves. Such an analysis will provide us with a better understanding of the cumulative impact of life course trajectories on health outcomes among grandparents. We will also explore how variations over time in grandparent childcare and other socio-economic and demographic factors affect grandparents' own health and wellbeing. This is important as understanding the health and wellbeing impact of engagement in childcare on older people will provide important evidence to enable policy makers across Europe to ensure that the role of grandparents in children's lives is better supported and any deleterious effects on health are minimised.