This is a project about how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected arrangements for agencies that work in partnership within local communities to deal with difficult and complex social problems. It is increasingly well-known that the Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society - these are also the people who are most likely to rely on services provided at the local level. Many of these services require partnership responses. For the last few decades, partnerships between agencies have increasingly been recognised as key to tackling complex issues like homelessness, criminal offending, deprivation, ill-health, addictions and social care - all of which tend to reflect wider social and economic inequalities. These 'wicked problems' (Buchanan, 1995) might require input from social work, the NHS, charities and criminal justice agencies among others. We intend to investigate the impact of Covid-19 and its associated 'lockdown' measures on the operation of these local partnerships. The pandemic has created significant extra demand for some local services while also putting new financial strains on local authorities. Partnership arrangements have tended to depend on regular meetings between relevant individuals from partner organisations, and it will not have been possible to conduct these in the lockdown. We are interested in considering this dynamic and its impact on both those working in the partnerships and on the service users. Furthermore, over this period local government has also been subject to major long-term budget cuts, including under 'austerity' policies enacted by the UK government since the 2007-8 financial crisis. For most local authorities, the context is one of long-term financial strain, not just the short-term impact of the pandemic. However, there is also evidence that the crisis has led local partnerships to work innovatively and quickly to deal with complex social problems at the local level. Notably, there was significant success in reducing street homelessness in the early months of the lockdown (Teixeira, 2020), while the shift to remote working is likely to have created some efficiencies as well as challenges. We will be focusing on local partnership arrangements in Scotland because local government in Scotland has significantly greater autonomy relative to central government, and because partnership has been a particularly essential element of Scotland's political response to austerity. We will carry out the research in two stages - an online survey of all 32 Scottish local authorities, followed by a series of interviews with people working in different types of local partnership within local authorities. We will then analyse the data and publicise our key findings - first to relevant stakeholders and then to the academic community. Any academic outputs from this project will be made available 'open access' (so that anybody can read them) under UKRI policy. We believe this research will contribute to helping local councils respond to Covid-19 and to other crises, and hence to reducing the unequal impacts of these crises on the most deprived and marginalised groups in society.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Summary Scholars have noted that the field of media communications is highly applicable to the study of young people's career decision-making. The consumption and function of media in society is changing, and the Internet and social media are increasingly being used to inform career decisions, especially in students. This research will explore university students' engagement with online interactive career resources such as online assessment tools, social media, discussion boards and messaging platforms via a mixed-methods approach. Findings will inform the development of new paradigms in career support research and practice and will position technology as a central theme within the field of career decision-making. Background information The function of media in society has changed dramatically over the last few decades (Pavlik, 2019). The dissemination of information has largely moved away from print and onto the screen (Kress, 2003), and - as people have more options to interact with information - audiences are more fragmented (Morris & Ogan, 1996). Determining the impact of mass media on groups of people is now harder to achieve as the boundaries between different mass media channels have become more blurred (Potter, 2013). As a result, scholars' focus is shifting away from the study of mass media and mass communications and towards personal and digital media communications (Luders, 2008). Indeed, while mass communications of the past would distribute generic information to uniform audiences over only a few media channels, at the turn of the millennium, interactive information was increasingly delivered via many channels to diverse audiences (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001). Relatively little is known about how young people engage with media in light of these changes when looking to make career decisions. Rationale ICT integration with careers guidance is promising: not only has it been identified as one of the most cost effective and efficient mediums to reach the greatest number of young people (Bimrose, Hughes & Barnes, 2011), but also, young people are skilled users of mass communications and technology and have high expectations of efficiency and incorporation of ICT into career resources (Spiotta, Kalhorn & Patel, 2018). Media technologies are generally dichotomised into interactive and observational (Pempek, Yermolayeva & Calvert, 2009), and millennials report a significantly higher use of interactive technologies compared to previous generations (Moore, 2012). Indeed, with the emergence of new online technologies comes the need to modernise and optimise media career resources. It is known that young people favour immediate and interactive sources of career support such as text messaging and social media over more traditional sources of career support and information (Bimrose, Kettunen & Goddard, 2015). It is proposed that the engagement of young people with online career resources is explored with the aims of generating new knowledge, informing the development of new career support tools, and reconceptualising career guidance and ICT training for students with reference to recent changes in media communications. The focus of inquiry will be on interactive media technology and online support tools such as online assessment tools, social media, discussion boards and messaging platforms. Research questions RQ1. How do students engage with online interactive media when looking to make a career decision? RQ2. What online interactive media resources are students most likely to access when looking to make career decisions? RQ3. What expectations do students have of digital career support resources? RQ4. What types of interactive media features are most suitable for the development of students' career support tools and services?

To accelerate the processing of roof truss designs using state-of-the-art- computing techniques.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.