 again. Thank you for joining this session. We're really glad that you're here and that you've attended the event. I tuned into a bit of the previous session and it seemed very interesting. And it was very well chaired. So, I'm going to attempt to be as efficient and helpful chair as the previous one. We have a short session here, so you're going to hear from each of us ychydig ar gyfer ydych chi ymweld i gwybod i'r gweithio i gael i gael eisiau gweithio gynnwys mwythio. Felly, Nina, rwy'n gwybod i ddweud hynny i gyd? Ynmchwil, ddweud hynny. Felly, rwy'n gwybod i gael i gael i gael i'r rhaid, my nameau Nina Hemmings, mae'r beserch ymlaen o'r gennydd ar gyfer y ffyrdd Fyllgrif. ac, ei chau rydyn ni'n ddechrau ei hwn yn gyfathol datblyniadol o'r ddweud ydw i gafiaeth gwylltus yn gyfathodol Gwneudol. Dwi'n rhaid i'n ddweud fy nghyfriwyd i'r ffwrdd mewn ffordd. Ac efallai John Fudd wedi'u cael ei ddweud. John, ein gweithio'n cyfrifiad. Oedda'r newid o'r cyfrifiad mewn cyfrifiad a'r ddweud i'r ddweud i gweithwyr ddechrau awrigol sy'n gymuned i'u gwirio hwn yn gweithio, Tych yn ymer yng Nghymru i ddwylliant y Llyfrgellol i ddweud y ddwylliant yma. Rhaid i'n ymlaen i, yn ymddangos. Mae'n byw ymddangos yw'r ffermach iawn, ymddiwch. Mae ymddiwch ymddiwch yn ei ddwylo cyffredigol. Fantastig. Yn ymddangos, rydyn ni'n ddiolch i'r Ffliwr Tomlinson a'r gweithgrifennu ar y Ffruwr Ffondaidd, a byddwn i'r gweithgrifennu ffocuses on the living standards of families on low to middle incomes. So in this session, which is running until five past five, we're thinking about policy and how we as researchers and the organisations we work for seek to influence policy. And so I hope that you can type your questions in and to the chat and I will get to them when we've finished hearing from each of us. And also if you want to raise your hand and ask a question and be seen, I think, by the room, by the virtual room, then do feel free to do that too. But I'm going to hand it over to Nina to do a few minutes. Thanks, Dan. And so I guess what I'll do is I'll just explain a little bit about my background prior to joining Neffle Trust and then talk you through some of the projects that I've worked on and some of the policy influencing that I've been lucky to be part of. So I guess the first thing I should say is that I feel really lucky to work at Neffle Trust, particularly given the pandemic this last year. It's been definitely an energising time, you could say, to be working in health research. Prior to joining, I studied social anthropology for my undergraduate degree and then did a master's in comparative social policy that I should say because I've noticed a question in the chat about what kind of degrees you might need. You don't necessarily need a master's, at least for the job that I have, which is a researcher. It was listed as a desirable criteria, but definitely not necessary. And after studying, I held a few different roles in the health care sector, which I can talk about later if helpful. So at Neffle Trust, basically we try to improve the quality of health and social care in the UK like Jevedd as well by generating evidence and producing policy analysis to shape the political and public debate and also influence policy and practice. So I've worked on a number of different projects which span everything from general practice to innovation, workforce, social care and immigration. And one example I'd just like to share with you of a policy win is some work that actually that I worked with the Health Foundation and Kings Fund on, so, two additional health think tanks on levers to boost the NHS workforce. So we came up with a proposal for a cost of living grant for student nurses set at around £5,000 per year after doing a bit of research around government's decision to remove the bursary for student nurses, which some of you might be aware of. So the same year that we published that recommendation as part of a report, government did introduce it. So that's quite a big win for me because we've seen that following that decision there's been a 30% increase in applications to student nursing this year on last year. So it's really positive, I think. And yeah, I'll leave it there. I'll let others speak for a while, so I hope that's helpful. That was great. It was really good to hear. Thank you. So over to Javid for a few minutes. I think I froze slightly when you asked the question. Can you repeat that, please? Just over to you to do a few thoughts. Yeah, sure thoughts. I mean, I can explain a bit about the Health Foundation. So yeah, it's a broadly health service delivery and social care, but we have five teams which work along our strategic priorities, which are really broadened in everything that they do. We have a real centre looking at long-term sustainability of social care and the workforce areas. We have a data analytics team that looks at all things data to do with health and social care, tech and AI in the NHS. We have the healthy lives team, which look at social determinants of health, so not specifically health delivery, but more the wider determinants of health of people's employment status, income, where they live, the environment. We also have a policy team, which does more of the direct influencing, producing recommendations and influencing health policy that way. And an improvement team, which works specifically with clinicians, particularly in the NHS to improve services. So as an organisation, we work quite broadly. In terms of my team, we focus very much on the funding side. We are also a funder, which makes us a bit distinct to something tanks. So we fund a lot of research into those areas alongside those strategic priorities and commission evaluations in those areas. I think in terms, given the kind of work that I do working on those programmes, I think my biggest win has been, most recently, we funded 10 projects from a COVID-19 focus programme, and we managed to get projects that are quite distinct looking at inequalities and some set areas that I don't think were covered or have been covered recently in terms of current research around the impact of COVID-19 on inequalities and people's health and services that way, in particular social care as well. So, yeah, that's my biggest win. And yeah, with the way that we influence in that sense is that we use the outputs, the findings and the research from the things we fund to then influence our policy work in the other teams and then directly with policy makers and decision makers on the wider research community too. Great. Thank you. And over to Anbar. Yes. So I think I'll just very briefly cover my background and how I ended up in my position, and then I'll discuss just a bit more about policy. So I actually joined Bright Blue pretty much straight out after completing my masters. So I did my undergrad, then did my masters immediately, and then went straight into as a research assistant. And I think, as Nina said, you don't really need, like a master's or a PhD is helpful, but you don't need it as a necessity. And I only had two months of work experience on another thing, Tang, one summer beforehand. And I've been at Bright Blue for two years now just staying then progressing through the research roles. In terms of policy, I think one thing I do want to highlight is that policy is very much, of course you're ready to research because policy development comes out quite simply through research in both in terms of kind of the existing data and kind of previous attempts at policies, but it's also a very, it's also involves a lot of kind of communication, a lot of the policy work that we've been doing and one major policy thing that we've had is removing a seven day wait in the wait for the first payment for university credit, which happened, which was removed a couple of years ago. But a lot of that work is not just about just the researching of the policy. A lot of it is communication. It's interacting with, for example, in case of the university credit, interacting with people who are exposing the policy in the third sector and getting their pinning and their views and getting their feedback as we kind of think about what is plausible whereas the evidence base, it's also interacting with actually politicians where possible and conversations with them, finding people who are, for example, in the party, but in the current governing party, but in the backbenches to see whether there might be some interest or support and also go to what is kind of politically feasible and what's not politically feasible. And I think the other thing about policy development that's quite interesting and quite tricky is that you have to think a bit about messaging, too. So it's not just about is this policy effective, good or not. It's also about thinking about is this something that politicians can support? Is there an immediate short-term impact which makes it easier for politicians to adopt? Now, of course, there's lots of good policies which don't necessarily are politically easily sellable. But often when thinking about how to address an issue, it's worth thinking. It's often we do take those things into consideration, too. I just wanted to point out how quite interesting more to their management of the process. I think that's very much all I have time for when I land there. That's great. You're all doing a very good job of keeping time, so I have to try and do that, too. I'm just going to talk really briefly about one example of policy influencing that has happened at the Resolution Foundation, which happened quite a while ago now, actually, in 2015, around the time I joined the organisation. My notes are on a different screen, so I'm going to look away a bit. We're a think tank that's focused on the living standards of families on low-to-middle incomes, and so that means we care about things like employment, pay, benefits, taxes, housing costs, those sorts of things. We're also a quant-focused think tank. We do lots of research in spreadsheets and in data sets trying to figure out what's going on in the world and explaining that to the public and to journalists and trying to influence the political debate that way. Back in 2015, the government announced a large cut to tax credits, which are one of the key benefits for working families, and we knew that that would have taken a lot of money away from low-to-middle income families, which are the group that we really care about. That's part of our charitable purposes to support the living standards of these groups. We got to work trying to figure out, A, how much money would it take away? We found out on average £1,300 a year. B, how many people would be affected? We found out 3.3 million families and see how different groups would be affected differently. So, for example, we found that families with children would have a bigger cut, £2,000 on average for couples where both the adults are working and they've got two children. Then we communicated this research and these facts in a variety of different publications and blogs that we tried to time well with other things that were going on, like the Conservative Party Conference. We didn't, for example, start a trendy Twitter hashtag, though other campaigning and think tank organisations might have. We didn't spend a lot of time trying to get ourselves in the room with ministers to talk about these things. Though lots of, again, other think tanks and research organisations might have different strategies and do that a bit more than RF. We didn't tell the stories of specific families, even though, again, other organisations, maybe like Child Poverty Action Group, would have done that. We focused on the numbers and explaining the impact through doing good research that was trusted to be impartial and accurate by journalists and politicians and trying to influence the public debate with that speed and precision in our analysis. Ultimately, the Chancellor performed a U-turn. We think that it was in part due to the impact that we had in helping inform that debate so the cuts, the tax credits didn't go ahead. That's my example. I hope that it's been interesting to hear from me and the other three panellists. We're good and on time. We've got about seven or eight minutes left for some questions. There are so many here, which is fantastic. I wondered whether Nina, in a second, you might take Rosie's question, which is about what are some of the typical day-to-day tasks that someone working for policy in a think tank might do. Before then, there's a couple of questions that I can rattle through very quickly. People have asked about what people have done when they've come straight out of universities. I worked for a student union for a year and then I worked in the civil service for a year. I think lots of people who worked in think tanks have come from the civil service or from other sorts of policies related jobs. If you can't quite get into a think tank right from the start, but you're interested in doing that, then I think the civil service is a good way to go. There was another one that I thought I could answer quickly. I was wondering if in order to become a researcher, a PhD is required. Someone has answered that and the answer is definitely not. I have an undergraduate degree and that is all. I'm in a think tank. I know lots of other people who work in think tanks who don't have PhDs. Nina, did you want to answer that question? If there's any others that you've spotted that you wanted to answer quickly, feel free to. Then I might come back to Anvar and you can maybe answer Adele's question about what can I do while I'm studying. We'll go over to Nina. Thanks, Dan. I guess this question is a question that the answer you'd get slightly varies perhaps on whether you're a policy researcher or your role is more policy and comms or just straight-up research. I do a little bit of both policy and research, which means that the types of things I do every day are things like everything from conducting literature reviews to interviews as part of research projects, things like press statements ahead of the budget or sorry, after the budget or coming up with proposals ahead of big events like spending reviews. We work quite closely with our comms team, who I should say are really excellent at finding opportunities for us to engage and disseminate our work and our findings and recommendations. Activities around that would be things like potentially meeting with special advisers or ministers even, some cases, pulling together submissions for select committees in their evidence inquiries and Twitter monitoring. I love doing that. Twitter is such a great place for monitoring policy and politics. So it's a mix really. This is a very long answer. It's a mix of policy research and a bit of stakeholder engagement amongst other things. I was on mute, great. Thank you for that answer. That was really helpful. Ambarth, would you be able to take this question around what experience can I get while studying that will serve me when applying for roles in policy? What skills do you look for? Yeah, I think in our perspective I think a research, general research skills are quite good just outside of your degrees, for example, I did an internship at an other think tank for two months, but there's other various opportunities. For example, we did, at our university we had a policy forum which I contributed to. So adopting that research skills in a more think tank current context and also at least for more political think tanks, the thing being quite familiar with current affairs is often a very useful thing, especially on the policy front. Quite a bit of my entry-level interviewing was actually about just checking how well understanding I was of the current situation and processes. So I think it's those two things, really, that are probably the key things. Thanks, Ambarth. And Javid, there's loads of questions here. I don't know if you've spotted any that you particularly wanted to answer but I'm happy to let you pick. OK, great. So Bandy has asked, would you need extremely strong research skills in a think tank, or would you say that you need a base level and then you can learn on the job? And then a similar sort of question, Maria has asked, what type of work experience would stand out on an application form, especially for graduates with limited experience? What are your research skills and your experience before you try and apply for think tanks? It's a good question. Before disclosure, I have a masters too, but that probably wasn't necessary for my kind of role. And I think with a lot of research roles, undergraduate degree is absolutely fine because you have a lot of transferable skills. It's the way that you apply them and you can discuss them so thinking about when you're applying for work. Bring some of our interns in and it's the same thing. It's how you discuss the skills and the experience that you have that work best. So in terms of those skills before kind of to go into research. I mean, I've always found the most, the place where I've had the most skills, how I've discussed my skills is mainly from my experience from retail more than actually probably my degree when I was first getting in a lot, which I actually see, I probably apply more in my role outside of specific research skills. So it's really when thinking about skills, it's how you apply them, how you discuss them and how they fit in. So I think in the way back in the first session, someone had a similar question and yeah, you don't. This thing needs to just talk about one thing or just about your degree experience. You have loads of different experiences from your life that you can discuss that apply to different content and it's just the way that you use them. But yeah, your degree from, I think that's most people here, would have put you in good stead. So it's about how you can make those transfers if there's a specific area you want to be in. Great, and wow, we're out of time already and there are millions of questions that we haven't managed to get to. But it's important that we keep time so you can go and have a little break before the next session. I'll just check with my fellow panellist if there's anything else you think it would be really good to answer an area that I didn't cover that you want to cover. You're very welcome to come in, we can run over by another minute. But if not, yeah, go on Nina, go for it. I was just going to add there are a few questions here about what it's like working at a think tank and how it differs to say academia. This is a good plug for the Neffield Trust summit which is at annual conference and that's taking place soon. It's actually the first year that it's going to be so I'd encourage you all to sign up to get a flavour of some of the topics and ways of working that you might experience at a think tank and also just to say there are lots of questions here and my email is on the Neffield Trust website and you're very welcome to contact me there if helpful. Yes, I also want to very quickly plug that we actually do weekly walk experience if you just need to send a very basic CV to us. If you want to contact me my email again is on our website then you can get a week's walk experience quite straight forwardly if you'd like to see what it's like to work at a think tank. Tavad, did you have anything to add to this? In Tavad the Health Foundation we have internships that run across each of our teams usually one or two positions across the year I think we filled most although there might be a few coming up this year but there's always opportunities available there's always opportunities my email is unfortunately not on the website as yet but I'm sure you can find it either by contacting the Health Foundation directly or I think they've been shared after this as well. Great, okay, thanks all so the next two sessions start at 5.15 3A will cover policy and work opportunities outside of London and 3B will cover communications and events, that's what I am told the link to join these sessions have been emailed over and they will be recorded so you can watch later if you can't make it. We didn't manage to get to I don't think we managed to get to more than 10% of your questions so there's lots of unanswered ones there an FAQ document will be sent around after the webinar and I'm sure that as many of the questions as we can possibly cover will be featured in that I hope this has been interesting if all too brief session for you but we're going to end it here so goodbye.