CIRCLE study by the sea
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Integrated Community Service Models for Children and Young People living in deprived coastal communities in England: A Realist Evaluation
IRAS ID
343044
Contact name
Sally Kendall
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Children and Young People (CYP) in England experience some of the poorest health outcomes and services in Europe. Inequalities in CYPs health are marked between north and south of England, especially within the coastal areas of England where deprivation is high, and social determinants of health such as housing, education, access to services, infrastructure, employment and social mobility play an important part in CYPs lives. There are also uneven numbers of children in care or YP leaving care in some coastal areas. For these CYP, health outcomes are even worse. By understanding the protective factors and assets within deprived coastal communities, it may be possible to develop models of care and service provision that build on assets and deliver community services to CYP that are timely, preventative and health promoting before the health problems of adult life become more serious requiring extensive and costly interventions. Such models of care already exist in some coastal community services in England (e.g. Integrated Neighbourhood Teams in Kent) but little is yet known or understood about how such models impact on the experiences, lives and health consequences for CYP.
Realist evaluation methods provide a way of understanding what coastal community services work for CYP and under what circumstances. We will undertake a scoping review of the existing evidence on community services for CYP. Following ethics approval, we will collect data from up to 4 case study sites from diverse coastal areas of England. As the realist approach is largely qualitative, we will use interviews and focus groups with CYP and professional staff as the main source of data, combined with some quantitative data such as surveys, local public health and administrative data analysis. Our analysis will be combined across the study sites and will include description of services in context, how they work (mechanisms) and the consequences (outcomes) for CYP.
We aim to:
Understand what different ICSMs exist for CYP in coastal areas and how they work
How ICSMs are accessed and attended by CYP, the barriers and facilitators
How CYP and their families experience ICSMs
What difference being able to access community services in a coastal area makes for CYP health
Assess the cost and benefits of ICSMs designed for CYP
Our definition of community services includes all community NHS, public health, social care and voluntary sector support within a coastal Integrated Care System (ICS).REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/EM/0170
Date of REC Opinion
5 Sep 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion