Research

Principal Investigator – St. Thomas University (2025 – present)

Social work recruitment and retention in New Brunswick: What can be learnt from those who stay?   

Through semi structured interviews and focus groups, this study explores how social workers with more than 20 years practice experience navigate lengthy careers in New Brunswick. The aim is to help identify the unique factors that support social work retention in the province and generate key messages to shape workforce retention and social policy development.  

Senior Research Associate – University of East Anglia (UK) (2023 – July 2024)

Retaining and supporting experienced child and family social workers in child protection: A theory of change  

The retention of social workers is an international concern. In England, the loss of social workers from adult and children’s social work leads to inconsistency for service users, workforce instability and is costly. This report introduces an evidence-based theory of change (ToC) to address and improve the retention of local authority social workers. The ToC provides a tool to assist workforce development and planning in local authorities across adults and children’s services. It is also relevant for adult and children’s social workers and team managers.

PhD – University of East Anglia (UK) (2019-2023)

Emotional labour in child and family social work teams: A hybrid ethnography

This study aimed to first establish the emotional demands of child and family social work practice. Secondly, to examine how everyday activities, relationships and interactions within the team setting either supported or hindered social workers in managing these emotional demands. Through the trifocal lens of emotional labour (Grandey 2023, Hochschild 1983) and the dramaturgical metaphor of Setting, Roles, and Scripts (Goffman 1959), a novel conceptual framework of hybrid team support, and how it is constructed in practice was developed.

Research Associate – University of East Anglia (UK) (2021)  

Retaining and supporting experienced child and family social workers in child protection

This research sought to understand how we can support and retain experienced child protection social workers by capturing the voices of experienced stayers. The study had two interlinked aims – to understand the phenomena of long-term retention and to explore the concept of Professional Identity (PI) among experienced social workers.