Profile
Biography
Laura is a mental health and social care researcher, and a qualified social worker. Before moving into research, she worked for fifteen years’ in practice in both qualified and non-qualified roles across the statutory and voluntary sectors, primarily in mental health contexts and her research focuses on mental health, with an emphasis on social factors and interventions and professional contributions, and previous research projects have included a national exploration of social work roles in mental health, an evaluation of a peer-led intervention for dementia support, development of a practice standard to support unpaid carers during leave from mental health hospitals and consultation to develop research relationships with people from Gypsy and Traveller communities.
Research
Research
Research interests:
- Mental health social work
- Professional roles in mental health
- Social interventions in mental health across the life course
- Public, patient and practitioner involvement in research
- Interventions with marginalised and excluded groups
Current research projects:
‘Hidden need’: Exploring suicide risk and suicide prevention with Gypsy and Traveller Communities: A
collaborative research project aiming to develop a community-led approach to suicide prevention with Gypsies
and Travellers in Yorkshire and the North East (NIHR Three Schools – Mental Health)
Crossing boundaries: Exploring effective approaches to partnership working with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to co-design accessible services and support for mental health: A collaborative research project which aims to develop effective approaches to community consultation and service co-design with GRT communities in Yorkshire and the North East with a view to developing a broader programme for practice and intervention which can be more widely tested (NIHR Programme Development Grant)
Carers All Require Emotional support, Resilience and Skills: The CARERS Trial: A feasibility trial of a skills enhancing programme for carers of people presenting with complex emotional needs and severe emotion dysregulation (NIHR Research for Patient Benefit)
Putting the ‘Social’ into Frailty: operationalising social frailty for health and social care in the UK: A literature based project which aims to operationalise social frailty as an actionable concept for use in UK-based health and social care settings.
