MASH has been a feature of safeguarding practices in England and Wales since 2011, bringing safeguarding agencies together to effectively share information and prevent organizational silos. Core agencies include the police, social care, and health, with key features of co-location, joint decision-making and co-ordination. A standardised definition for MASH implementation does not exist, and this lack of a clear definition has meant various structures have emerged, impacting on safeguarding practices. This policy brief draws on workshops with a range of safeguarding practitioners between May and July 2022, about the challenges of collaborative working practices and how MASH can become more standardised. Whilst national standardisation is required, there needs to be flexibility when implementing guidelines, so that practices and processes reflect regional needs and resources.

At heart all leadership is relational, and this chapter urges researchers to move away from traditional theories of leadership to re-imagine public leadership as embedded in dialogic processes. Disintegration of traditional hierarchies and replacement by alliances, partnerships and networks in public spheres highlight relationism as an important aspect of organisational study. Relational leadership involves dynamic processes, human interactions, dialogue and negotiation rather than hierarchy and authority. Ongoing conversations across boundaries creates meaning on what leaders do, why they do it, and what might be achieved at specific times and places. The concept has a long history, is influenced by various disciplinary approaches, and in responding to pressing wicked issues, new relational forms of public leadership can be more inclusive, collaborative and engage much broader constellations of actors to collectively identify and frame societal problems, seek commonly agreed interventions, and create social/public value for the public interest and common good.

Globally public services have changed cultures and behaviours more akin to commercial sectors and citizens are no longer passive consumers but empowered individuals who expect state (and non-state) agencies to provide more personalised services and choice increasingly through a wider range of providers. Increased performance requirements and rising citizen demands have led many organisations to develop innovative service delivery mechanisms. The author argues that creating public and social value is an essential part of a comprehensive approach to transforming and continuous improvement of modern governance and effective public services delivery in response to wicked issues. Relational partnering is the key to achieving public and social value, as it facilitates long-term relationships between public, private voluntary, third sector organisations and other stakeholders. For many place leaders inequalities in deprived communities can only be addressed by developing integrated and targeted commissioning of local authority services in partnership in response to budget cuts and escalation of vulnerable groups with complex needs.

The chapter explores a practical approach to place leadership within the wicked problem of County lines. The problem is framed within complicated landscapes as multi-agency leaders, including police, develop innovative solutions based on dialogue and relational approaches. COVID revealed how place leaders overcame historical and professional differences and merged understandings of what constitutes the public good. Each leader has differing engagement, assessment of vulnerability and risk, all governed by statutory responsibilities, values, professional culture and standards of behaviour. Policing county lines is very complex, demanding mobilisation of a wide variety of people and publics, where conflict and contestation of interests are evident. Nevertheless, all actors must continually share tacit knowledge, read changing contexts, people and situations in rapidly changing, often escalating contexts and situations. They must also engage in sense-making to understand how others are interpreting, reading and framing situations differently. Significant challenges face those leaders tackling County Lines.

This paper contributes to the levelling up (LU) debate by examining the case of the North-East of England, a region with long-standing and deep-seated historical issues of inequality. It will determine if centrally directed LU policies are appropriate and necessary interventions by charting the evolution of UK policy shifts and impacts on the region. In analysing the past failed policies and current situation, including the Devolution Deal, the authors point to some of the critical challenges and opportunities still facing regional leaders. It concludes by arguing that the region is at an impasse and calls for a regional summit to agree on regional priorities and more robust and effectively targeted strategies for the future. Overall, the paper suggests that without the correct policy interventions and the capacity to deliver them, levels of inequality will persist.

Covid-19 has led to renewed public support for public services. Frontline workers symbolize a renewed ideal of public service ethos (PSE), though little attention has been paid to how the public managers delivering vital services interpret and mobilize PSE. We show how PSE is implemented by public managers reflecting their local contexts. We examine the theoretical roots of PSE and challenges by newer theories of public management before illustrating its contemporary manifestations through three case studies of local government responses to Covid-19 in England, showing how PSE has been adapted in current contexts and continues to inform public management practice.

At the time of writing (April 2022), globally, the effects of COVID 19 are still very real for the National Health Service, and other health services across the world; the Brexit aftermath continues to reverberate across Europe; and an energy crisis is looming in the wake of the ongoing Ukrainian War. Meanwhile the UK is experiencing economic slowdown and rising inflation, whilst the Johnson Conservative government is plunged into the midst of Partygate. The culmination of these crises is severely impacting the UK economy and this cocktail of internal and external shocks does not bode well for reducing disparities or addressing social and economic difficulties. Many commentators argue that in the last 2 years, existing social and economic inequalities have been exacerbated, the north-south divide has worsened; with a severity incomparable across Europe. In his first speech as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson spoke of a need to ‘level up across Britain’ and ‘answer the plea of the forgotten people and the left behind towns’, unleashing the ‘the productive power’ of every corner of the country” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2019). The theme of levelling up was also addressed in the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto – this pledged to ‘to use our postBrexit freedoms to build prosperity and strengthen and level up every part of the country’, through specific measures such as Investing in towns, cities, and rural and coastal areas; giving those areas more control of how investment is made; Levelling up skills using apprenticeships and a £3bn National Skills Fund and creating up to 10 freeports to help deprived communities. Similarly, The Queen’s Speech (2021) stated the Government will ‘level up opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses and economic growth and addressing the

This book explores the societal and pastoral roles of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) surrounding the Vulnerability Agenda.

The 2008 global financial crisis intensified our focus on the role of local governments as strategic actors, within current cycles of economic, political and governance change. This paper highlights the significance of Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, becoming a resilient local authority, with the capacity to respond to pertur-bations, and the ability to self-organise and learn. Existing models of resilience were insufficient for explaining how a strong mayor's team was able to turn around the fortunes of the city. The paper uses a synthetic theoretical model combining the templates 'behavioural resilience' and 'Place-based leadership'. The findings reveal that Thessaloniki's administration was able to respond to a unique set of problems, including the modernization of local services, balancing a problematic budget, opening the city to the world using some of its historic monu-ments and drafting an emergency plan for future shocks. The mayor's team was capable of galvanizing a network of key actors from the city's government, public, private and civic bodies to adapt and generate new ways of thinking and functioning in the context of change and uncertainty, so Thessaloniki appeared to offer a role model on how local government in Greece could develop strategies for overcoming austerity and stress.

In the UK regions that are structurally more vulnerable are less able to respond to economic shocks (McCann, 2017). An economic downturn for a poorer region like the North East of England (Jenkins, Pike, & Tomaney, 2019) will mean it enters recession earlier and emerges from recession later than significantly wealthier regions like London and South East region in England or Amsterdam City region in the Netherlands. We ask, what can be done to improve the impact of policy interventions that support and develop weaker regional economies? Behind this chapter sit two elements of research study: a question, which asks, what if you develop a “great” policy, that is well researched and designed; however, it fails because the people who deliver it don’t have the right culture, values, or knowledge? The second element is that the authors are interested in a range of factors that affect not only policy implementation including entrepreneurship but also economic culture and social capital, looking at the problem from different disciplinary viewpoints (Baker & Welter, 2018). This chapter makes a comparative study between the North East of England and the Amsterdam City region to explore how policy implementation might be improved as other factors of place cannot be easily altered, these factors include major infrastructure, political systems, and budgetary control as well as overall economic wealth. What this means is that practical research and studies have to find factors that can be improved in order to achieve change and a greater economic impact on Places in this context, the North East of England.