Dr Ruth Parkes

Ruth teaches across under-graduate and post-graduate Social Work courses and allocates student placements. She has a key role in developing relationships with local stakeholders and training social work practitioners. Her teaching role with students largely focuses on criminal justice, offending behaviour and developing skills for practice. Ruth is the disability lead for the school and is passionate about ensuring equal learning opportunities for all students. She is also the deputy lead for Youth and Justice in the University-wide trans-disciplinary Criminal Justice Partnership.

Ruth joined UCLan in October 2013. She previously worked for the Probation Service for over ten years. As a Probation Officer in Greater Manchester and Cumbria, Ruth worked mainly with people sentenced to medium/long term custodial sentences, both before and after their release from prison. Her main areas of expertise are assessment, supervision and intervention with men convicted of sexual offences and domestic abuse. As a Practice Development Assessor, Ruth taught Trainee Probation Officers and assessed their practice. Her training specialisms are the use of assessment and information gathering tools such as Risk Matrix 2000 and ViSOR (the Violent and Sex Offender Register), and report writing for Court and other formal hearings. Ruth has a keen interest in criminal justice research and has published articles relating to her work on Police sexual trauma exposure.