Researcher in Focus: Belinda Tyrrell

Posted on: 17 January 2022 by Nick Jones in 2022 Posts

Our featured researcher of the month is Belinda Tyrrell, Research Associate at the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place. Learn more about her research supporting inclusive growth and public service innovation here.

A former policy and programmes officer at Liverpool City Council, Belinda joined the University in November 2010, working in HLC before becoming the Finance and Research Team Leader for SOTA.

After 18 months as the Impact and Business Development Manager for HSS, Belinda joined to the Heseltine Institute as a Research Associate in 2018, moving from a professional service to academic post.

Belinda’s areas of research interest include inclusive growth and public service innovation, her research agenda is focused on improving outcomes for communities both within the Liverpool City Region and beyond. Growing up in a housing cooperative underscored the importance of placing the community at the heart of the decision-making process and she is keen to capture lived experiences of induvial and communities in her work.

She was the Co-Investigator on the interim evaluation of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s (LCRCA) 'Households into Work Programme (HiW)'. A collaboration between the LCRCA, six Local Authorities and Department for Work and Pensions, Households into Work was a significant labour activation programme for the city region, designed to address the systemic issues associated with long-term and entrenched worklessness that have resulted in generations of the same household being unable to enter the labour market or sustain work.

She has presented the findings from the evaluation at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the University of Manchester’s inclusive growth conference and at a DWP Areas of Research Interest workshop.  Her work on the evaluation enabled Belinda to develop relationships with leading practitioners in the field of service reform and researchers from centres including City REIDI at the University of Birmingham and UCL’s Institute of Health Equity.

Following the completion of the HiW evaluation, Belinda was commissioned by the national charity Right to Succeed to develop a Shared Measurement Framework to track the outcomes of its North Birkenhead Cradle to Career Programme, which is long term multimillion-pound intervention aimed at improving outcomes for children and young people in North Birkenhead. The relationship has continued beyond the commission and she is now a member of the programme steering group which brings together practitioners from schools, local authorities, charity and community sectors and statutory services including the NHS.

Working with Heseltine Institute Co- Director Sue Jarvis and her colleague Dr Tom Arnold she has recently completed the PPR funded project Bridging the Asset Gap. A collaboration with LCRCA and St Helens Borough Council in 2021. The project aimed to develop an approach to understanding the relationships between different types of community asset and social infrastructure.

Over the next three years Belinda will be working on the evaluation strand of the Liverpool City Region’s Economies for Healthier Lives Programme. Funded by the Health Foundation the £465,900 project brings together a partnership of public sector organisation and higher education institutions including the LCRCA, Local Councils, Public Health England, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, community and voluntary sector organisations with the aim of improving the links between health and economic outcomes.

Find out more about Belinda and her work here.