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This study aims to establish the complex nature of leadership in children’s centres in the UK and to demonstrate the value of system leadership as a vital concept for children’s centre leadership.

The study presents a case study of leadership development with 24 leaders of children’s centres across Hertfordshire.

The study considers the efficacy of system leadership, including distributed leadership, within this setting. Evaluation of the programme found that the concept of system leadership was appropriate, supportive and validating for leaders of children’s centres; however, the concept needed support with further practical tools and resources.

The limitation of the study is its specificity to one local authority, and further research will be needed to see how generalisable the findings are.

The implication of the study is that leaders of children’s centres could be supported to work more effectively with system leadership.

When leaders of children’s centres feel effective, they have enhanced well-being and achieve more outcomes, which in turn enhances the well-being of the children and families that they serve.

Leadership in children’s centres is an under-researched and under-supported area. This study makes a new contribution to this sector of leadership.

This paper proposes a biopsychosocial (BPS) analysis of COVID-19 experiences which enhances understanding of complex and interrelated factors and leads to the proposition of a BPS recovery framework.

Online narrative research was used to explore people's experiences of COVID-19 and was conducted over a four-month period. The call was distributed via a short open-ended qualitative online survey advertised on social media platforms and 305 responses came from across England.

The findings illustrate people with a narrow range of BPS characteristics experienced over a wide range of BPS impacts which are nuanced, complex and dynamic. Left unaddressed these may create future adverse BPS characteristics. An integrated BPS framework for recovery is proposed to avoid such further negative outcomes from the pandemic.

The sample contained a bias in age, gender and living arrangements.

The paper offers a clear framework to enable integrated holistic recovery/regrowth planning.

Using the framework would reduce social and health inequities which have been recently deepened by COVID-19 in the long-term.

The paper is original in its use of a BPS analytical framework.

This chapter outlines the contextual factors that define an impoverished northern town in the UK called Blackpool, and the implications of this are drawn out through social reproduction theory. Following this, the equalities literacy framework is used to abductively analyse the narratives of six young people. This provides the reality of the young people's lives situated within this context and draws out recommendations for how young people's lives in Blackpool and beyond might be improved by frontline staff, organisations, policy makers and governments.

The Marginalisation and Co-created Education project has established and utilises a conceptual framework called ‘Equalities Literacy’ (Stuart et al., 2020) that evolved from the first yearlong action research cycle of the project. The framework was initially informed by the practice experience and theoretical knowledge of the international and interdisciplinary team and later substantiated and adapted in the light of the 100 international youth narratives collected in the second yearlong action research cycle. In this chapter we propose the Equality Literacy Framework is a potent tool for direct work with young people and adults, as an indirect tool to understand young people and adults, as a practice framework and as a research framework.

This chapter presents a co-participatory analysis that brings in empirical interview data from all three nations involved in the MaCE project. More than that, the chapter also focusses on the co-researcher student's ideas for change in schools, youth services and higher education. By presenting these ideas in a raw and unedited manner, the chapter invites the reader into the very engine room of the MaCE project, the reflections, discussions and rough ideas that we try to convert into practical solutions for children and young people. Ultimately, the chapter presents the framework for well-being, education, learning and development developed throughout this project as a bridge to change.

This chapter explores the discourse and phenomenon of ‘early school leavers’ (ESL) through a policy lens from the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark and from an international critical theoretical perspective. We look at political documents to find out how ESL and the young people involved are perceived. This chapter will equip the reader with an overview of a range of frames on ESL and the impact those have on societal attitudes, educational practices and, ultimately, young people.

In this chapter, we will look at how the indirect approach can enable us to find a way to learn about young people's lives. The setting for this chapter is informal youth work, reminding us of the value of a wide range of practices with young people, and the findings are equally relevant to formal and informal education as guiding principles for good practice. We will look at the skillful interactions practitioners establish with young people and how they can be developed and promoted. Reflective practice for practitioners is identified as beneficial in adding the value of young people's voice, whilst building relationships. The nature of young people's participation and power is argued to benefit from a co-constructed and socio-cultural understanding; majoring on the importance of context, indirect method and equality literacy framework. We will suggest how the indirect approach can improve young people's lives in schools and/or youth provision.