Professor Helen Beckett

Helen is a Professor of Social Policy and Social Work, based with the Connect Centre for International Research on Interpersonal Violence and Harm. In addition to her own research around children and young people’s experiences of harm (and how these are responded to), she is invested in supporting others to research well in the field. She leads a programme of work supporting researchers to safely and ethically engage children and young people in abuse-focused research and runs a Researcher Wellbeing Network focused on improving understanding of the impacts of researching emotionally challenging topics, and improving the support provided to those doing such work. Helen provides doctoral supervision and contributes to teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Helen has 25 years’ experience as a social researcher, working in the fields of child protection and children’s rights across the voluntary and statutory sectors, and academia. She is an applied researcher, committed to undertaking ethical, high quality research that creates a medium for children and young people to exercise their right to have a say on matters that affect them, particularly in the field of sexual violence, where such opportunities are often denied.

Helen’s portfolio of research on children and young people’s experiences of sexual harm over the last 15 years has established her as one of the leading UK researchers working in the field. In addition to her research work, Helen has qualifications and experience in policy analysis, and has supported both policy and practice development around children’s experiences of harm across the UK. As an applied researcher with a keen focus on impact, Helen publishes, trains and consults widely around responding to children’s experiences of abuse, and the ethical and methodological considerations of researching in this field.

Prior to joining us, Helen was Director of the Safer Young Lives Research Centre (SYLRC) at the University of Bedfordshire; an applied research centre dedicated to developing understanding of, and improving responses to, children and young people’s experiences of harm. During her 12 years at the SYLRC, Helen’s own work was particularly focused on children and young people’s experiences of sexual abuse, their associated needs and services responses to these. She led/co-led over ten different studies around this, and was lead author on the 2017 Department for Education (DfE) guidance on child sexual exploitation (extended version). From 2019-2023 she was the academic lead for the DfE Tackling Child Exploitation support programme, that resulted in the creation of Multi-agency Practice Principles for responding to child exploitation and extra-familial harm (2023). Helen also supported the SYLRC team to deliver a wider programme of applied research, and policy and practice reform, around other forms of abuse and extra-familial harm.

Prior to joining the University of Bedfordshire in 2011, Helen worked in the fields of research and policy across the academic, statutory and voluntary sectors in Northern Ireland for fifteen years. During that time she conducted the first study on child sexual exploitation in Northern Ireland (Barnardo’s 2009-2011) and led a wide-scale review of children’s rights in Northern Ireland, whilst working for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (2005-2009). Helen has also undertaken research around juvenile justice (2002-2005) and her doctoral research study (1997-2004) was an ethnographic study of youth homelessness.