Emotional Health and Wellbeing

Many of our research areas are sensitive and challenging in nature. We recognise that working on these topics can negatively impact emotional health and wellbeing.

We work closely with victims and survivors of sexual violence and law enforcement personnel, who routinely witness, view and document the harms done to others, including children and young people. Researcher wellbeing is also often overlooked, sometimes leaving researchers who work in sensitive and potentially traumatic research areas feeling unsupported.

Given the sensitive and challenging nature of some research, the support services that are offered are often not sufficient or appropriate. As a result, we prioritise the importance of emotional health and wellbeing to ensure the health and resilience, not only of its stakeholders and partners, but also of researchers working in these areas.

Our work and research centres on the following themes:

• Building an evidence base to fully understand the emotional health and wellbeing of police officers and staff who routinely work in child sexual abuse investigations, and third and private sector personnel who are exposed to potentially traumatic materials as part of their job, nationally and internationally.
• Working with policing partners to develop and share best-practice in relation to proactively protecting and maintaining good emotional health and wellbeing, utilising trauma-informed practices.
• Improving awareness of, and responses to, the wellbeing of researchers who work in sensitive and potentially traumatic topics and developing best practice to support researchers to navigate conducting sensitive research.