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Staff

Cheryl Simmill-Binning, PhD  -  Director of Assure

Email: c.simmill-binning@lancaster.ac.uk

Cheryl left her employment as director of training services with a national medical IT company to go attend Lancaster University where she gained a first class BA (Hons.) in 1992. Later she was awarded a PhD. for her thesis on community and expert risk management. Since then Cheryl has been employed as a full time Research Associate in the Department of Applied Social Science, Lancaster University, and is one of the co-founders and directors of ASSURE. During this time she has worked on a number of projects including the identification of the needs of young carers, parents' interactions with third and statutory sector services and provision for BME communities. She specialises in working with third sector and local authority strategic policy, practice and provision. During her time with ASSURE Cheryl has devised, managed and presented a number of innovative methodologies valued by commissioning bodies including the provision of supported action learning environments, templates for future evaluations and monitoring processes, capacity and skills building workshops with managers, practitioners and service users, and the employment of interactive pedagogy to enable users and practitioners to establish a sustainable model of evaluation post contact completion. Cheryl is currently departmental representative on the faculty boards of ethics, research and enterprise and leads the Quality of Life Network. She is a member of the United Kingdom Evaluators Society, on the editorial board of the Journal for Voluntary Sector Research and a qualified General Practice Manager.

Ian Paylor, PhD

E-mail: i.paylor1@lancaster.ac.uk

Ian has a long track record of successfully managing a range of research projects and has direct experience of relevant research in the field. He has demonstrated an ability to work on a range of research topics, including a number of large-scale surveys. He has recently successfully managed the external evaluation of four Youth Justice Board (YJB) projects, one of which involved extensive building and maintaining the trust of schools, teachers and other stakeholders over the period of evaluation. His involvement with the YJB continues through his involvement with the Professional Certificate in Effective Practice. Whilst his work has been predominately concerned with young people he has also undertake research into services for older people with learning difficulties, Black and Ethnic Minority Elders and local authority residential care workers. He has also recently undertaken several surveys for Lancashire Constabulary. During the last few years he has worked closely on these and other projects with Dr. Cheryl Simmill-Binning but has continued to undertake additional research projects concerning drugs and alcohol. He has just completed (with Michael Orgel - Bay Community NHS Trust) managing a NHS Executive North West Research and Development Directorate project examining the Attitudes and Knowledge About Hepatitis C Amongst Patients and Staff of Community Addiction Services and Hepatitis C Clinics. Current work in this field involves the investigation of provision under the auspices of Lancashire Drug Action Team. Other projects have included an evaluation of the National Reassurance Policing Programme, an Action Research Project into Teenage Health Scrutiny and an evaluation of the use of Lay assessors in Social Care Inspections – the latter being an excellent example of work undertaken (for CSIC) at short notice, with a very tight time-frame and delivered on time . He has also recently completed the evaluation of the Sure Start programmes in Ribbleton and Fishwick & St. Matthews, both in Preston . Other recent projects include conducting the initial social impact assessment of a planned regional casino and the evaluation of a small scale social enterprise network in Cumbria plus research into the impact of developing criminal justice interventions relative to a cohort of substance misuse related offenders

Alison Wilson, MA

E-mail: a.k.wilson@lancaster.ac.uk

Alison is a qualified social worker with an MA in Social Work. She has four years experience working directly with drug addiction where heroin has been the drug of choice. She has practiced extensively in a prison setting as a drug counsellor, and as a social worker providing aftercare and housing support services for rehabilitated drug users and their families. She has a substantial practical and theoretical knowledge of heroin use, and an appreciation of the problems of researching this field. She is able to adopt a sensitive and perceptive approach to the needs of this research study and is skilled at dealing with issues of personal relationships, where the crux of the matter has been drug use. Sizeable past research experience has involved a social science-based project (Cancer Patients Experience of N.H.S. Service Provision). The latter research involved extensive exploration through in-depth interviewing into service users experiences of the National Health Service. The study was the final piece concluded from a major Northern-based N.H.S. study with the Health Department at Lancaster University . She recently undertook the evaluation of the Outlook project for Lifeline in Manchester , and an alcohol scoping study; a needle exchange situation report; a survey of service users and carers groups plus a workforce development survey for Lancashire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (LDAAT). She is currently conducting ‘Confidential Inquiries' into drug related deaths and near misses for LDAAT, and running an 18 month evaluation of the Gateway Enterprise Pilot Project at Lancaster Farms Youth Offenders Institute. Other ongoing joint research projects with other team members include a qualitative study focusing on the reunification of children with birth families following a period in public care, specifically looking at how family support is conceptualised and delivered in the context of ‘reunification' across Lancashire, and the development, implementation and evaluation of the OffGam (gambling intervention) Pilot at Risley and Coldingley Prisons.

Georgia Spiliopoulos – Research Assistant ASSURE

Joy is working on a number of ASSURE projects evaluating service provision for families in local authority areas and also works with young people as a seminar tutor in the Crime and Social Life course for the department of Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Joy is a qualified social worker with a first class degree in Social Work from the Technological Educational Institute (T.E.I.) of Athens and is currently working towards a PhD in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University . Her research topic is on asylum seeking and motherhood and is very interested in service provision, access to services and community based and informal support. During her social work studies (2001-2005) she worked with a significant number of service users from various backgrounds and accessing a variety of services. She has had frequent contact with children and families, drug users, users of mental health services, disabled people, asylum seekers and elderly people through the Regional Social Welfare office in Athens , the OKANA Drug Rehabilitation Centre in Athens , the ‘Eginition' Psychiatric Hospital in Athens and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Her contact with service users was in the capacity of interviewing individuals and working with families and groups of service users. In addition, she has participated in European Union funded programmes on youth, minority groups and European Union policies in different European countries.

Academic Advisory Team

Ms Jill Anderson

BA (Hons) English; MA Applied Social Studies; CQSW

Jill is interested in how learning about mental health (and not just mental ill-health) can be fostered; communities of practice in an education and training context; user/survivor and carer involvement in education, and voluntary sector social work. Jill has been working with ASSURE on several of its projects.

Dr. Karen Broadhurst

Karen's interests are within social work and social science are organised around the following four main themes:

• Child welfare : help-seeking, defining and delivering family support, adoption and fostering, the law relating to children
• Decision-making in public services
• The practice/research relationship
• Philosophy of Social Research: Perspectives and methods that place central the practical/situated character of language/action, for example, Bourdieu's theory of practice, ethnomethodology, Harvey Sacks's work on membership categorisation analysis, discourse and conversation analysis.

Karen has undertaken a range of applied research projects that aim to contribute to the international knowledge base that informs policy, legislation and practice in child welfare. Whilst her work tends to focus on what might be described as applied child welfare studies, her research cuts across sociology, psychology, social policy, philosophy and social work. She is particularly interested in strengthening the social science knowledge base for social welfare practice and the links between academic and practice sites.

Professor Roger Clough - Emeritus Professor of Social Care at Lancaster University

Roger has over 20 single or joint authored publications to his name and a considerable number of reports. He has written extensively on social services, its delivery, practice, policy and management over the last 25 years and is stated to have had considerable influence over the development of policy in that time. In the past he was an elected member of a county council and a Chief Inspector of Social Services. Much of his work challenges the idea that ‘common sense' is sufficient to guide good practice. He continues to work closely with user and service groups providing ground breaking methodologies for qualitative interactions.

Dr Claire Fitzpatrick (nee Taylor)

Claire's interests are: Young Offenders, Children in Care, The link between Youth Justice & Child Welfare, Criminal Careers, The Use of Evidence and Knowledge in Criminology & Criminal Justice.

Claire joined the Department of Applied Social Science as Lecturer in Criminology in September 2005 after previously worked at the University of Nottingham in the Centre for Social Work and School of Law, where she was involved in a project on foster care for the Social Care Institute of Excellence, as well as research on criminal investigations into allegations of past abuse in care. Since that time Claire also worked for the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, where she undertook a wide range of regional research and analysis in the area of crime reduction.

Dr. Paul Iganski

Degree: BA (Hons) Social Science and Administration, (University of London, Goldsmiths' College 1987), MA (Econ) Applied Social Research (University of Manchester 1988), PhD Social Policy (London School of Economics 1993).

Paul Iganski specialises in research on equal opportunities and workplace diversity; ‘hate crime'; racism, crime and justice. His specialist teaching area is in research methodology. He has directed and carried out policy-related research projects that include an evaluation of the recruitment and selection of minority ethnic groups to nursing and midwifery education (funded by the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting), and an evaluation of the work of the London-Wide Race Hate Crime Forum (funded by the London Probation Service). He also worked with researchers from the Metropolitan Police Service to produce the first ever analysis in the UK of police data on anti-Jewish incidents. On the strength of that work Paul served as an expert witness, providing written and oral testimony, to the recent All-Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-semitism.

Dr. Stuart Kirkby

Stuart joined the University after completing 30 years service with the Lancashire Constabulary. During that time he worked in a number of general and specialist posts, latterly as a Divisional Commander at Lancaster as well as Detective Chief Superintendent, based at Police HQ. This final post gave him responsibility for resources that dealt with specialist crime(homicide, counter-terrorism, forensic, intelligence, serious & organised crime). During his Police career he have had experience of commanding and being a part of many critical incidents and major investigations, and was also trained as a 'Hostage Negotiator'

On completion of his Ph.D., on the subject of child-molesters, he became a Chartered Psychologist, and nationally accredited 'offender profiler'(now known as 'Behavioural Investigative Advisor') and has assisted Police Forces in this capacity since 1994. Research interests are in the area of Policing; Organised crime; Crime reduction and investigation; Community Safety; and Offender behaviour especially in relation to violent and sexual crime.

Professor Corinne May-Chahal

Professor May-Chahal has substantial experience in comparative European social policy and research in child welfare and has recently focused her research on young people and gambling and social impact assessment of changing gambling opportunities. Her paper, " Health and Socio-Economic Impact Analysis - Overcoming Fragmentation" was presented at the International Gambling Think Tank in Auckland and a review of research on young people and gambling in the UK was published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as a technical report Young People and Gambling in Britain (PDF 662kb) . The paper is a systematic and critical review of the research literature relating to gaming machine, lottery and pools coupons practice by children and young people under 18.

The Lancaster research team, led by Professor May-Chahal, are working in the areas of health and social impact assessment, community impact assessments, gambling, debt and help seeking and developing a public health approach in gambling. They are currently undertaking a scoping exercise for the DCMS on Assessing the Impact of the Gambling Act, 2005, leading a consortium of researchers including Prof. Rachel Volberg, Prof. Peter Collins, Dr. David Forrest and the Hon. Phillida Bunkle.

Child care and comparative child welfare

Prof. May-Chahal has developed substantial experience in comparative European social policy in child welfare through her involvement in several European funded research collaborations. Amongst completed projects are the Concerted Action on the Prevention of Child Abuse in Europe (CAPCAE) (Word) a project funded under the EC Biomed II programme for which she was co-ordinator, CUPICSO (Word) (Collection and Use Of Personal Information on Child Sex Offenders in Europe), SIFS (Social Inclusion and Family Support), and PANDORA (Confidentiality and the Response to Child Sexual Abuse in 5 European Countries). She is currently working on the Co-ordination Action on Human Rights Violation (CAHRV), as co-ordinator for the sub-network on Protective Factors.

Dr Fiona Measham

Dr. Fiona Measham was appointed to Lancaster University in 2000 and is Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Applied Social Science. Dr. Measham has been conducting research in the field of alcohol and drug studies for twenty years, including large scale longitudinal surveys, ethnographic and observational studies, in-depth qualitative interviews and currently, the possibilities of virtual methodologies in this field. She has published widely in national and international journals and is co-author of Illegal Leisure (Routledge, 1998) and Dancing on Drugs (FAB, 2001), based on two large-scale studies of young people's alcohol and drug use, and co-editor of Swimming with Crocodiles: Young people and extreme drinking (Routledge, 2008). Her interests span changing patterns of young people's drug and alcohol use, gender, the relationship between crime and culture, motivations and outcomes of intoxication, with a particular interest in the night time economy, and the problematic-recreational interface in leisure-time consumption. She acts as consultant to government bodies, the media and the alcohol industry, as well as expert witness in criminal intelligence matters.

Dr Karenza Moore

Karenza is a lecturer in Criminology at Lancaster University . Her research interests include 'recreational' polydrug use amongst young people in leisure contexts, with a focus on in-situ harm minimisation strategies, and the relationship between professional and lay harm minimisation knowledge. She has a particular interest in emergent illicit drug trends amongst young people in leisure contexts. She is currently undertaking (with Dr Fiona Measham) the first UK study of ketamine users, alongside a study of clubbing and polydrug use using online surveys, in-club surveys, interviews and observational techniques. She is currently co-editor of a special issue of the international journal Addiction Research and Theory on social and cultural perspectives on global ketamine use (Forthcoming Jan 2008).

Professor Dave Smith – Professor of Criminology

David Smith started his working life as a probation officer, and moved to Lancaster University in 1976 as a lecturer in social work. He was made senior lecturer in 1992 and appointed Professor of Social Work in 1993. In 2002 his title was changed to Professor of Criminology. David Smith is committed to the idea that academic research should be accessible and useful to practitioners and policy-makers. This is reflected, for example, in his recent work on probation practice with racially motivated offenders. He has researched and published widely on youth justice, including evaluations of social work projects for persistent juvenile offenders, probation policy and practice, racist violence, minority groups' experiences of criminal justice, and inter-agency co-operation in criminal justice.

Simon Unsworth

Simon Unsworth is a member of Applied Social Science as well as a freelance consultant and trainer who specialises in equality and diversity within health and social care organisations, with a particular expertise in carers' issues. Prior to setting up independently, Simon worked within both the voluntary and statutory sectors addressing carers' needs at individual, policy and strategic levels, including leading on the development of multi-agency carers strategies, the implementation of new services for carers and the development of appropriate, effective methods of monitoring the quality and quantity of services provided to carers and service users.

Currently, Simon provides training to local authorities and other organisations around their duties regarding carers' assessments, how to fulfil these duties and how to carry out carers' assessments effectively and has carried out comprehensive reviews of the services provided to carers by local authorities and made successful recommendations for their improvement. Simon serves as a trustee on the steering group for a local carers organisation and is also a carer. These experiences have given him an excellent understanding of the issues affecting carers and how these issues might be resolved.