Research and Policy

Research and Policy engage with themes including social integration, homelessness, civil society, and financial inclusion, this includes:

Research: building an evidence base about church-related social engagement across England
Resources: strengthening local social action by sharing learning, providing data, and supporting theological reflection on practice
Impact: making sure that the impact and extent of our projects and programme is robustly and appropriately evaluated
Policy: influencing public debate and social policy on issues affecting the people and communities in which we work.

CUF Look Up Tool

Use the search tools to discover more about poverty in your parish.

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Impact

Understanding the impact of our work is really important to us. We do this by collecting stories, feedback, and other evidence about the difference our work is making in communities across the country.

We also partner with research centres and universities to get an external perspective on our impact.

This helps us to keep improving what we do, and to share what we are learning with others.

In this section you can find our annual CUF Impact Reports, programme evaluation summary reports, and useful resources to support you in evidencing the impact of your own work.

Research

Our research work aims to build up the evidence base around key issues emerging from our work in communities across England. Many of our research projects explore the relationship between social action and Christian faith, and seek to resource churches in their engagement with social issues, locally and nationally. In addition we have conducted research on issues such as homelessness, social cohesion, and food poverty.

In this section you can find our research reports and related resources.

To learn about our ongoing research into the relationship between social action, discipleship and church growth in the Church of England, being conducted in partnership with the think tank Theos, take a look at the GRA:CE project page.

If you want to find out more about social issues in your local neighbourhood or parish, use our Look Up Tool.