Social Work

Provides readers with the essential knowledge and skills to undertake effective assessments and appropriate interventions. It focuses on key issues such as resilience, professional values, ethics, complexity and reflective practice.



I have been a social worker since 1992 and chose social work as a profession to challenge inequality and discrimination. I have worked mainly in childcare social work, and from 1995, specifically in fostering and adoption. I have worked in statutory, voluntary and independent social work and have worked in all four countries of the UK. I developed a specialism working with male carers, as well as caring for children on the autism spectrum. Having held a wide range of practice, training, reviewing and management roles, I am also a passionate educator. I am qualified to teach adults and children, have been an NVQ assessor and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I completed a PhD on foster fathers through Durham University, and joined Northumbria University’s teaching team in 2013. I teach across all social work programmes, focusing particularly on social work assessments and interventions. I supervise PhD students, and I currently am principal investigator on an evaluation of simulation-based learning in social work programmes.   I qualified as a social worker in 2001, and went on to practice in a variety of mental health settings. I became an Approved Social Worker (ASW) and later an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP). I developed a specialism in working with people diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and self-harming and suicidal behaviours. I qualified as a Best Interests Assessor (BIA), and went on to become a local authority Mental Capacity Act lead.  From 2013 until its closure, I was a College of Social Work’s accredited Expert Safeguarding Adults Practitioner. I left practice in 2013, to teach and research at Northumbria University. I teach across all qualifying and post qualifying social work programmes, focussing particularly on social work with adults, mental capacity, adult safeguarding and mental health. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and I am currently completing a PhD, which explores how adult safeguarding is performed with people experiencing dementia.