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Professor of Social Work, University of Sheffield

Kate Morris is a qualified registered social worker, and joined the University of Sheffield in 2015. She was previously Director of the Centre for Social Work and Deputy Head of School, University of Nottingham. She began her career as an academic at the University of Birmingham. However, Kate gained substantial experience in practice, management and policy development prior to moving into social work education and through her research and her involvement in national and international social work developments has remained very closely connected to practice.

Kate’s areas of interest are: family minded policy and practice, family participation in care and protection, the reform of safeguarding practice and child welfare inequalities. She is passionate about social work and the role of social work in supporting change. Kate managed the large scale complex national evaluation of the Children’s Fund (2003 – 2006) and has retained a strong interest in early help and family support. Kate was funded to explore the involvement of families in the reviews of cases when a child has died or suffered serious injury as a result of abuse and, with Professor Brid Featherstone is leading an exploratory study of the perspectives and experiences of families with multiple and complex needs. This builds on her previous work for the UK government as part of the 'Think Family' policy stream, and her work internationally reviewing the evidence concerned with the impact and effect of family decision making in care and protection. Kate is active in national social work reform developments, was previously chair of JUCSWEC, and sat on the Professional Assembly for the College of Social Work. Kate sits on the editorial board for Families, Societies and Relationships and is a member of the ‘Your Family Your Voice’ (www.frg.org.uk) Steering Group. She is a member of the QAA social work benchmarking group. Kate supervises PhD students in the areas of family caring relationships, family interventions and family support. Kate is Co-Director of the Family Potential
Research collaboration http://www.familypotential.org.

Experience

  • –present
    Associate Professor in Social Work, University of Nottingham