Faculty:Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care
School:Education and Social Care
Location: Cambridge
Karen is a Senior Lecturer Practitioner in social work at Anglia Ruskin University, based in Cambridge. Her work is currently covering matters related to social work placements, including identifying and reviewing placements suitable for practice, offering guidance and support to students and placement tutors on practice learning issues, working in partnership with stakeholders (neighbouring local authorities, various agencies from the private, voluntary and independent sector) and ensuring that practice learning is embedded in both social work courses, MA (Cambridge) and BA (Cambridge and Peterborough).
Karen qualified as a social worker in 2003. She has a strong interest in practice education, supporting students on placement since 2006. Her practice background was in the field of HIV/AIDS and Older People’s Mental Health. She worked as a volunteer at a HIV/AIDS and Cancer hospice in Kampala, Uganda, supporting the Social Worker. She then worked extensively in training Local Authority social workers. This involved working on a project for the early implementation of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, then moving into the role of Adult Safeguarding Training Manager. Prior to moving to ARU she was a Professional Educator in a Social Work Professional Development Team, leading on the coordination of social work placements and Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSWs) in their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment. Karen has also supported Practice Educators in training, within the role of Practice Learning Mentor and, as a trained coach, supporting NQSWs.
Karen has a particular interest in the access and use of facilitative procedures and will shortly be commencing research into this area of practice.