Staff Profiles

She has twenty years’ experience of undertaking and managing applied social research, across academia and the voluntary and statutory sectors, with a particular specialism in CSE and related adolescent safeguarding issues. Helen is experienced in both qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation, and holds particular expertise in ethical means of researching sensitive issues and facilitating the meaningful engagement of children and young people within this. She has published and presented widely on CSE and regularly consults on research, policy and practice in this field.

She has worked closely with the National Policing Lead for Child Protection and Abuse Investigation, providing research support and now project manages the new CSE and Policing Knowledge Hub at the Centre. She has previously worked across a range of child protection research posts, with specific interest and expertise in the field of child sexual abuse.

In this role she managed and coordinated the six research sites and worked with four groups of young people to make films on this issue www.beds.ac.uk/gasev. More recently she has been working with Beyond Youth Custody, www.beyondyouthcustody.net exploring the resettlement needs of young people leaving prison.

He has experience working in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Major Crime Team, Domestic abuse investigation Unit and was the project manager for setting up forcewide PVP (Protecting Vulnerable People) Referral Centres (now MASH) and more recently piloted a new proactive programme to enhance police and multi-agency responses to safeguarding vulnerable missing children. He is now the Project Coordinator for the new CSE and Policing Knowledge Hub at the Centre.

Carlene also acts a consultant to local authorities and voluntary sector organisations developing contextual responses to adolescent safeguarding, and has engaged with professionals in 54 local authorities on this matter since 2013. Prior to this Carlene was the Principal Policy Advisor to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s Inquiry into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups, Assistant Director of Policy and Research at children’s charity Barnardo’s,and for five years researched the impact of criminal gangs on women and girls, at the charity Race on the Agenda.

Over the last 12 years Camille has developed and facilitated a range of creative, participatory projects seeking to further meaningful dialogue between young people, policy makers and researchers. In June 2013 she completed a doctorate exploring service users involvement in decision making about their care. She currently manages the Making Noise research project for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, exploring children’s experiences of help-seeking and support following sexual abuse in the family network. Related recent research areas include research for HMIC exploring children’s experiences of contact with the police because of safeguarding concerns (Beckett, Warrington, Ackerley and Allnock, 2016); a participatory study of young people’s experiences of criminal justice processes in child sexual exploitation cases (Beckett and Warrington 2015); and research on children and unreported crime (Beckett and Warrington 2014).

Prior to joining the University, Joanne spent three years working for a number of charity and statutory organisations, monitoring, analysing and evaluating research, policy and practice pertaining to child sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and domestic violence.

She is the Chair of the Academic Advisory Board to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse 2015 ongoing, and is a panel member of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England inquiry into child sexual abuse within the family environment. Her research and consultancy focuses on preventing sexual violence against children and she works with a range of national and international agencies towards this aim.

With an early career rooted in social welfare practice with children, she has some twenty years’ experience in research and evaluation and is an experienced manager of people and projects. Working with services that support marginalised and excluded communities of young people often with complex and overlapping vulnerabilities, she specialises in realist evaluation and in the development of co-produced approaches to measuring the outcomes of social welfare intervention. Prior to joining the University in 2013, she was Assistant Director for Research and Outcome Evaluation in the Strategy Unit at Barnardo’s, where she had also held the organisational lead for child sexual exploitation and trafficking.