Events in 2022/23

Uncertainty and Child Protection: 5 October 2022

This online event was co-hosted by the Centre for Social Work Innovation and Research (CSWIR) at the University of Sussex and Social Work Innovation Research Living Space (SWIRLS) at Flinders University, Australia. 

Date: Wednesday 5 October, 2022
Time: 8.30am (BST)

How the global pandemic impacted everyday child protection practice and policy in the UK and Australia

This public event was an ‘in conversation with’ style event in which academics and practitioners discussed how practice has adapted to the heightened sense of uncertainty engendered by the pandemic in everyday child protection social work. The unique perspectives of social work practitioners and managers from Australian and UK practice contexts was brought together in conversation with academic colleagues from SWIRLS and CSWIR.

Your Baby and Child: 24 October 2022 

This event was co-hosted by the Centre for Social Work Innovation and Research (CSWIR) and the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) at the University of Sussex.

Date: Monday 24 October, 2022
Time: 4.30-6pm
Presenter: Dr Penelope Leach CBE

Dr Leach is a renowned developmental child psychologist. Her research includes work on discipline, the effects of babies on their parents, and an ongoing look at childcare in the UK.

Dr Leach is most widely known for her bestselling books on child development and parenting. These include Babyhood, Children First: What Society Must Do – and Is Not Doing – for Our Children Today, the classic Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five (new edition 2022), and Your Growing Child: From Babyhood Through Adolescence. She also wrote the Lifetime Television series of 72 programmes, ‘Your Baby and Child with Penelope Leach’ which won a CableAce award and was nominated for an Emmy.

PROMO POSTER

Getting Beneath The Surface: Experiences of researching psycho-socially: 22 November 2022 

This event was co-hosted by the Centre for Social Work Innovation and Research (CSWIR) and Professional Practice with Children, Youth and Families, VID University College, Oslo, Norway.

Date: Tuesday 22 Noveber, 2022
Time: 12.30-2.30pm
Zoo link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/95830517316

This online seminar provided an opportunity to hear about two doctoral research projects and the role of psycho-social theoretical concepts and approaches in fieldwork and doctoral supervision.

Reflect, Draw, Write, Talk: Co-developing psycho-social methods of inquiry with research participants
Jo Williams from England will share her experiences of co-developing creative research methods of inquiry with social work supervisors to explore beneath the surface of their work. She will share examples of data to convey how a psycho-socially informed approach enabled the examination of experiences of relationships with supervisees and researcher observations of key interactions within the supervisory dyad.

‘It felt like I was vomiting’: Reflecting on psycho-social research and supervision
Tina Feyling from Norway, and her doctoral consultant, Gillian Ruch, from England, will be in dialogue about their experiences of engaging in psycho socially informed supervision. The conversation will illuminate the power of unconscious parallel processes that can help doctoral researchers and supervisors to make sense of what is happening in the research process.

PROMO POSTER

Informing Policy Development and Implementation in the Child Welfare System using Integrated Administrative Data: 7 February 2023

This online event was co-hosted with the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) 

Date: Tuesday 7 February, 2023
Time: 3-4pm
Presenter: Dr Rameela Raman, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, USA

Administrative data sources provide a wealth of information and are a valuable resource for research. However, they are limited in the amount of information they capture and may not provide a comprehensive picture. Recently, integrating data from other sources (e.g., neighborhood-level socioeconomic characteristics from the United States Census) and linking them to child welfare administrative data has been shown to be an approach to address the limitations.

In this remote seminar delivered via Zoom, Dr Raman presented examples of real-world policy-relevant research projects from her work with a US child welfare system to motivate discussion on the advantages and challenges of using linked data.

Dr Raman also touched on the types of research questions that can be addressed through linked data and demonstrate interactive ways of presenting and communicating analysis results.

Dr Rameela Raman has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and collaborated for over a decade as the lead statistician with the Vanderbilt Center of Excellence for Children in State Custody, an academic partner to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. In this role, she works with a team - including child psychologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians and substantive experts - to formulate a question that is relevant to their field, to place the results in context, and communicate the results to policymakers. Much of her work involves critically analyzing current practices, and evaluating effectiveness of interventions to guide research, policy, and advocacy to improve the lives of children in or at-risk of coming into state custody. Her research interests include leveraging multiple sources of data to incorporate social determinants to study outcomes of interest. Dr Raman graduated with an MA and PhD in Biostatistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

A Doctoral Research Seminar: 17 May 2023

This online event is hosted by CSWIR with The Helsinki Practice Research Centre and the University of Melbourne 

Date: Wednesday 17 May, 2023
Time: 8-10am UK time / 10am-12pm Finnish time / 7-9pm Australian time
Presenters: x 3

No.1
Understanding Inequalities through Space, Time and Materiality: Environmental movements promoting social justice and wellbeing beyond the human
Presenter: Fanny Södergran, The Practice Research Centre, Helsinki

Fanny’s research explores how residents engaged in environmental movements, experience the social injustices and wellbeing dimensions of the climate crisis. By seeking to understand how residents comprehend themselves in relation to the natural environment, the research focuses also on the wellbeing of nature and non-human subjects. The analysis conducts inquiries into how environmental movements make meaning of how circumstances mediated by space, time and materiality, generate unequal possibilities for wellbeing and social justice in the climate crisis. The study will contribute new knowledge of entanglements with, and ethical accountability towards nature, comprising multiple subjects confronted by the risks of climate crisis. The research generates important considerations for social work, with the consequences of climate changedirectly embedded in its practices. Through social work’s focus on people’s agencies in reconstructing their futures, and its historical development alongside social movements, it must also support bottom up initiatives by people working for change. To promote this perspective, the data consists of interviews with, and blog posts from, residents engaged
in environmental movements in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

No.2
“You’re bringing your stuff to the relationship…”: British female social workers’ understandings and experiences of the concepts of gender, sexual orientation and sexuality and how these impact their relationships with boys/young men who display harmful sexual behaviours.
Presenter: Anna Hutchings, Centre Social Work Innovation and Research, University of Sussex

In the UK, social work is a ‘female majority profession’ (McPhail 2004) and as such, most of the social work practice with boys and young men in respect of HSB will be undertaken by female social workers. Alongside this, those who sexually harm are mostly male children and adults (Hackett, 2014). There is a lack of research into the gendered nature of HSB and how gender stereotypes, victim-blaming attitudes and sexual assault myths might be thought about and addressed in this context. This PhD research project offers a qualitative exploration, using semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation, of how UK female social workers consider these ideas in their practice with boys and young men who display HSB. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis findings suggest that female social workers’ individual experiences influenced how they thought about gender, in respect of themselves, and in their work with boys and young men and the specific ways they attempted to acknowledge, explore and challenge gendered beliefs and attitudes in their relationships with boys and young men who display HSB. This research contributes to understandings of gender focused interventions in the HSB practice context.

No.3
Working with Families during Critical Health Events: Considering psychosocial care during paediatric emergencies
Presenter: Alys-Marie Manguy, University of Melbourne, Australia

Alys-Marie’s PhD examines the acute psychosocial care of families in pediatric resuscitation situations within the Emergency Department at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. The project aims to develop an evidence-informed model of care that begins before the family enters the hospital system. Guided by a social work practice-based research approach, the study has utilised a mixed methodology, including a scoping literature review, clinical audit, and parent interviews. The results propose a model for the acute psychosocial care of families of seriously unwell children brought to hospital in emergency situations.