Laura Tucker, Research Associate, School for Business and Society
Laura is a mental health and social care researcher and qualified social worker who spent fifteen years in practice in both qualified and non-qualified roles, primarily in mental health, before she moved into research.
Her current research focuses on mental health social interventions, especially with under-served and marginalised communities, and professional roles in mental health social work, with an emphasis on coproduction and collaborative approaches.
Email: laura.tucker
Our 60-second interview with Laura:
Could you please tell us what work you do in the field of mental health?
My work focuses on the social aspects of mental health care, with a particular focus on social work in mental health, and mental health social interventions for under-served or marginalised communities.
This has involved me across a range of areas of working, from RCTs for interventions to support unpaid carers in mental health, through evaluation of peer-led interventions in dementia for South Asian communities, through to consultation and intervention development with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and establishing roles for social work in mental health contexts. My projects also emphasise coproduction, so a lot of my research is undertaken in partnership with practitioners and people with lived experience from the relevant communities.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
Working in partnership with people outside academia is incredibly rewarding – I bring my own lived experience as a mental health practitioner to research, but I learn so much every day from the community members and practitioners that I work with.
Building those relationships with people across communities and practice settings helps to break down barriers that can keep research isolated and our shared knowledge and experience means that we can make sure we’re asking the right questions in the right ways for the research to have meaningful impact.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
We have a lot of really positive aspirations around coproduction and collaboration in research, which are mirrored in practice, but the systems we all work within haven’t always kept up with those aspirations.
There are a lot of competing demands which can make genuine coproduction difficult to achieve, especially with marginalised communities where there can be more work needed to build trust and work together effectively. Finding solutions to this that address all those competing needs in ways that are acceptable for everyone involved can be very complex.
What impact do you hope your work is having - or can potentially have?
We know that mental health and social care services are currently under exceptional strain, and what would be ideal isn’t always what’s realistic. Working with both practitioners and communities in partnership helps to identify the ‘workable; as well as the ‘ideal’.
This means we can use what our research discovers to give practitioners and communities tangible changes that they can make here and now, as well as building the evidence to make the case for what is needed in the long term.
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
Take time to disconnect – turn off your social media and your news feeds, step away from the phone and the computer, and do something you enjoy just for yourself. It’s a tough world we’re living in right now, and it’s okay to limit how much you expose yourself to that.