Susan Kay-Flowers

As a senior lecturer, Dr Susan Kay-Flowers has a long-standing interest in researching children and young people’s relationships. Her research into young adult’s childhood experience of parental separation builds on earlier research into early years children of separated parents, and her previous professional career in Probation and the Family Courts.
Educated at the universities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield, she became an academic in 2002 working at Liverpool Hope University, before moving to Liverpool John Moores University in 2012. Her current role involves supervising research students at undergraduate, Masters and doctoral level as well as undertaking research with international partners.
Keen to ensure her research is available to a wide audience including young people, parents, practitioners and academics, she created the framework for understanding children’s accommodation of parental separation. Her aim is for the framework to be used to inform and guide the actions and decision-making of those able to improve and support the well-being of children of separated parents. It has been presented to a range of international audiences including academics, professionals and students in England, Romania and Nepal.
The full study has been recently published: ‘Childhood Experiences of Separation and Divorce: Reflections from Young Adults’, Policy Press 2019.