Families, Children and Life Transitions
How can children’s stories of illness help practitioners meet their needs more effectively?
How does the mother of a child with severe disability and complex health care needs know if their child is in pain?
What sort of support really helps parents to have confidence in their parenting skills?
What methodological approaches and methods fit best with researching with children and young people?
In this cluster we aim to answer these questions and many others through our contemporary, collaborative research and scholarship.
Our research encompasses a range of synergistic areas exploring the life transitions, health needs, support systems and well-being of families and children. The core areas we are focusing on include:
- children with chronic/complex health care needs, especially their lived experiences, their service needs and the ways in which they and their families negotiate family life;
- children’s pain, the ways that their parents, health care and other professionals recognise and respond to their pain;
- the ways in which children experience and express their pain parents, carers and family support, particularly within the early years of children’s lives;
We believe that really good research results from research questions which are fundamentally important and clinically relevant to children and families. We have established networks and contacts throughout our home region, nationally and internationally; we know our ‘home patch’ and we are well placed to link into and influence practice, research and ideas across the world. Our research reflects a commitment to extensive collaboration with families, practice based experts, voluntary groups and researchers from different disciplinary and academic backgrounds.
Our research is challenging and methodologically innovative ranging from tool development and validation to narrative, autobiographical, participatory, arts-based, solution-focused and appreciative approaches. Our work is relevant to practice across a range of contexts. It has excellent fit with the key drivers and targets for promoting health, caring for and supporting families/children and facilitating life transitions.
Dissemination of knowledge, not only to fellow professionals through journal and conference papers but also to parents, carers and children through workshops, posters and other mechanisms, is core to our approach.
Each of us additionally contributes to our own specific fields through Editorships, society memberships, guideline development and service on national, international and charitable committees.
Our postgraduate research degree students experience high quality team supervision that is tailored to meet their individual needs throughout their studies. Students enhance their transferable skills and publish papers en route to successful completion of their target awards (since 2005 we have had 4 PhDs, 2 MPhils and 2 MSc awarded). Students studying within the cluster find the atmosphere to be “collegiate”, “developmental”, “supportive” and “stretching”. They benefit from the “knowledgeable”, “friendly”, “positive and productive environment” and the “excellent sense of humour” of their supervisors. Students currently undertaking cluster-aligned studies (5 PhDs, 3 MPhil/PhDs,) are all making excellent progress with their research.
