Globally, one in four cities is facing water stress, and the projected demand for water in 2050 is set to increase by 55%. These are significant and difficult problems to overcome, however this also provides huge opportunity for us to reconsider how our water systems are built, operated and governed. Placing an inspirational student experience at the centre of our delivery model, the Water Resilience for Infrastructure and Cities (WRIC) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) will nurture a new generation of research leaders to provide the multi-disciplinary, disruptive thinking to enhance the resilience of new and existing water infrastructure. In this context the WRIC CDT will seek to improve the resilience of water infrastructure which conveys and treats water and wastewater as well as the impacts of water on other infrastructure systems which provide vital public services in urban environments. The need for the CDT is simple: Water infrastructure is fundamental to our society and economy in providing benefit from water as a vital resource and in managing risks from water hazards, such as wastewater, floods, droughts, and environmental pollution. Recent water infrastructure failures caused by climate change have provided strong reminders of our need to manage these assets against the forces of nature. The need for resilient water systems has never been greater and more recognised in the context of our industrial infrastructure networks and facilities for water supply, wastewater treatment and urban drainage. Similarly, safeguarding critical infrastructure in key sectors such as transport, energy and waste from the impacts of water has never been more important. Combined, resilience in these systems is vitally important for public health and safety. Industry, regulators and government all recognise the huge skills gap. Therefore there is an imperative need for highly skilled graduates who can transcend disciplines and deliver innovative solutions to contemporary water infrastructure challenges. Centred around unique and world leading water infrastructure facilities, and building on an internationally renowned research consortium (Cranfield University, The University of Sheffield and Newcastle University), this CDT will produce scientists and engineers to deliver the innovative and disruptive thinking for a resilient water infrastructure future. This will be achieved through delivery of an inspirational and relevant and end user-led training programme for researchers. The CDT will be delivered in cohorts, with deeply embedded horizontal and vertical training and integration within, and between, cohorts to provide a common learning and skills development environment. Enhanced training will be spread across the consortium, using integrated delivery, bespoke training and giving students a set of unique experiences and skills. Our partners are drawn from a range of leading sector and professional organisations and have been selected to provide targeted contributions and added value to the CDT. Together we have worked with our project partners to co-create the strategic vision for WRIC, particularly with respect to the training needs and challenges to be addressed for development of resilience engineers. Their commitment is evidenced by significant financial backing with direct (>£2.4million) and indirect (>£1.6million) monetary contributions, agreement to sit on advisory boards, access to facilities and data, and contributions on our taught programme.

This project aims to co-create Nature-based Solutions (NBS) knowledge to empower communities, organisations, and individuals to innovate NBS as alternatives for healthcare and societal resilience following the COVID-19 pandemic. It will take a human-centred design approach to enable wider collaboration and to integrate otherwise 'siloed' knowledge and expertise. This project is a joint-effort between the Royal College of Art, the University of Sheffield, Walsall Housing Group, Bradford City Council, Shared Assets, HAS technology, National Association of Voluntary and Community Action, and Intelligent Health. NBS are actions, e.g. ecological restoration, that work with nature to help address societal challenges. In this proposal, it refers to social innovation actions utilising green space, parks and lakes, for the purpose of health and wellbeing. It is based on the evidence that regular contact with nature enhances physical health and mental wellbeing, and creates social benefits. It expands the concept of 'green prescription' to include wider communities and public beyond patients and GPs. The main deliverables of the project are: - An integrated method supported with training webinars enabling people to innovate and improve cost-effective NBS; - An open innovation platform facilitating NBS development using the integrated method, to link available resources and different stakeholders including commissioners, providers, agencies and voluntary community action groups and individuals; - The outcome of the pilots - NBS concepts - will be implemented by Walsall Housing Group and Bradford City Council to create immediate benefit to vulnerable people in these two areas, building upon existing approaches in the creation of service directories; - One journal paper, two conference papers to examine the role of design thinking in NBS innovation.

It is widely considered that outcomes for 'looked after' children (children in care) are generally poor. Research has pointed to poor education outcomes, high rates of mental health problems, disproportionate involvement in substance abuse and crime and the over-representation of care leavers among the unemployed, homeless and prison populations. However, most studies to date have found it hard to disentangle the effects of being in care from the impact of the difficult experiences (in most cases, abuse or neglect) that led to their admission. One of the reasons for this has been the difficulty of collecting data on children and their family backgrounds before they are taken into care. As a result, key questions remain unanswered. Does being in care compensate children for previous disadvantage and improve their wellbeing, from a frequently low starting point? Or does it instead compound the disadvantages they bring with them into care? In other words, do children who enter care do better or worse than children with similar backgrounds and histories who remain at home? The aim of this study is to investigate whether outcomes for abused or neglected children who are admitted to care are better or worse than those for similar children who remain at home, supervised by social workers on a Child Protection Plan.It will be conducted in Bradford and will draw on data from two types of pre-existing dataset: (a) the Born in Bradford (BiB) Cohort Study and (b) Bradford Council's administrative databases on children known to have experienced abuse or neglect and children who are admitted to care. The BiB cohort study provides a fantastic opportunity to investigate the effects of being in care in relation to the effects of abuse, neglect and family difficulties, because it provides information on children's family circumstances before they entered care. During ante-natal appointments, it gathered information from the mothers of approximately 14,000 children born in Bradford April 2007-June 2011, at which time they gave written consent to the future linkage of this data with other data. By linking anonymised data from these three existing datasets, the study will be able to identify all children in the BiB cohort deemed to have experienced abuse or neglect since April 2007 and, within this group (likely to be around 540 in number), to identify which of them have been taken into care. We will then follow up all abused and neglected children, who will be 2-6 years old at the time of the study, to compare the development and well-being of those placed in foster care to the progress of those who remain at home, by three means: (a) a survey of social workers (b) Interviews with the foster carers of the children in care and the parents of children living at home, (c) Assessment of children's language development and early reading ability. In these ways the study will gather information on children's general health and development, emotional, behavioural or attachment difficulties (if any), language development and early reading skills, their overall well-being and whether they have been re-abused. This will allow us to analyse the relative effects on their development and well-being of their family backgrounds, their experience of abuse and neglect and of being in care. One of the toughest decisions that Children's Services have to make is whether to support abused and neglected children at home or take them into care. This multi-disciplinary study will be useful to policy-makers and practitioners as it will provide important new information on the circumstances in which support at home, or alternatively entry to care, can best promote the safety and development of children who have experienced abuse or neglect. It will also help to advance scientific understanding of the impact of placement in care on abused children.