pathway: Social Work

My research examines how adoptees perceive socioeconomic status (SES) and how shifts in SES following adoption influence their identity development. Children from the most deprived neighbourhoods in England are significantly overrepresented within the care system, often resulting in a pronounced socioeconomic divide between birth and adoptive families. As a result, many adopted children experience substantial changes in economic conditions, cultural and educational expectations, social networks, and family dynamics. Despite this, little is known about how adoptees themselves make sense of these transitions or how such experiences shape their emerging identities. My research addresses this gap by exploring adoptees’ interpretations of socioeconomic change and the identity processes that accompany it. In doing so, it contributes to broader sociological and psychological literature on SES-based identity frameworks and the ways in which social mobility is understood and lived by young people.  

My research investigates how refugees exercise personal, relational, and collective agency in shaping their social inclusion journeys. I propose that developing a human-centred framework—moving beyond vulnerability-based models—enables more effective communal and systemic practices that enhance refugee inclusion. Drawing on life history interviews and participatory workshops, I explore how agency emerges in refugees’ lived experiences and informs inclusive, justice-oriented social work. This work challenges dominant narratives and seeks to empower refugees as co-creators of support systems, contributing to more ethical, responsive, and sustainable approaches informing policymaking, social work practices, and NGOs interventions.

My mixed-methods study aims to get a detailed view of facilitators and barriers to placing looked after siblings together in care. Because even though studies have shown the positive effects of placing looked after siblings together on placement stability, permanency, mental health and well-being, only one-third of looked after children live with their sibling(s) in care. I will conduct a quantitative case file analysis and hold interviews with social workers to answer my research questions.

My research seeks to explore the experience of caring of family caregivers, who have been caring for family member with schizophrenia. A sequential explanatory mixed-method study combining quantitative and qualitative research methods will be employed in the project. The correlation between carers’ perceptive burden, family functioning, social and professional support will be examined via quantitative methods. Additionally, an in-depth interview will be employed to explore carers’ attitudes towards long-term care services and their views on whether support services contribute to their ability to meet their caring responsibilities.

My study seeks to investigate the risk perceptions of safeguarding practitioners that influences their decision making in order to fulfil the legal obligations placed on them by the inception of the Care Act 2014.  The Act stipulates that these decision-making processes be as collaborative as possible with the adults deemed to be at risk of abuse.  Utilising critical interpretive synthesis to explore the debates surrounding the introduction of the legal obligation in the Care Act 2014, the study will also seek to explore the views of service users who have been involved in safeguarding investigations.

My PhD seeks to explore the stories of women engaging in a digital-led sewalong, their experiences, their motivations, the meanings they ascribe both to the sewalong and to sewing more generally, and the role of social media in relation to these factors.

Sue is a PhD student and practising Social Worker.   Sue completed an MSc in Social Work Research at Bristol in 2015, before commencing her PhD studies.   Sue is in the second year of a part-time PhD, currently undertaking a literature review and preparing a methodology chapter for a qualitative study, aiming to explore the experiences of adults who have been separated from their siblings through adoption.