Rachael is an associate professor, researching community-based harm. Her interests and expertise lie in building meaningful partnerships with practitioners to imagine and create new forms of child welfare, centred around care and humanity.
Rachael’s research integrates psychosocial/ systems theories with the ecological ideas at the heart of Contextual Safeguarding. In doing this she hopes to contribute to social change that takes seriously the messiness of everyday life, paying attention to relationships, emotions and social structures.
Rachael’s career spans the creative arts, the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and social work. She joined the Contextual Safeguarding programme as a practitioner in Hackney, supporting the first implementation of Contextual Safeguarding (2017-2019). She went on to complete a collaborative PhD focused on youth parenting in 2020 and co-authored a book about Contextual Safeguarding systems, reflecting on the Scale-Up Project (2019-2022).
Rachael’s research leadership includes:
- Sustaining Social Work (2022-2023): researching the experiences of practitioners delivering Contextual Safeguarding practice
- Responses and Outcomes (2023-2024): researching the use of Family Group Conferences to bring communities together to create safety for young people
- Testing and delivering a Contextual Safeguarding Outcomes Framework
- From Capacity to Context (2024-2027): looking at the barriers to social care systems working in partnership with parents in situations of adolescent safety and harm, exploring the use of arts-based and creative methods for shifting cultures and harmful attitudes
- Everybody's Business (2024-2025): exploring the implications of Contextual Safeguarding within the hospitality sector
- Providing research support for Planning for Safety
Alongside her research, Rachael oversees several practitioner networks, including the Local Authority Implementation Network (LAIN); a group dedicated to the development of Community Group Conferences (adapted Family Group Conferences); and a peer-support group for practice leaders that builds Contextual Safeguarding knowledge, confidence and capacity within the social care sector.
Rachael sits on the British Association of Social Workers’ Children and Families Thematic Group and is a member of GAPS, who support relationship-based approaches and psychodynamic and systemic thinking in social work. Rachael loves to swim, dance and commune with nature.