Dr Sarah-jo Lee
Senior Lecturer
Biography
Sarah-Jo is a registered social worker and qualified practice educator with a practice background in supporting children and families and child protection. She came to social work after a career working in the field of domestic violence and abuse; first in an academic context, undertaking her PhD in the area of group interventions with perpetrators of domestic abuse and then as part of a team investigating the impact of housing and homelessness policy on women fleeing domestic violence. Sarah-Jo went on to work in the voluntary sector, developing domestic abuse interventions for male perpetrators of domestic abuse, before taking up a local authority appointment as Domestic Abuse Policy and Strategy Officer. Within this role she was responsible for supporting agencies to develop and improve their responses to domestic abuse and developed bespoke training for children and families’ social workers and allied practitioners.
Teaching and Supervision
Sarah-Jo is interested in radical, critical and social justice pedagogies. She is a personal tutor for students across the BA and MA Social Work programmes and is a dissertation supervisor for MA final year students. Her teaching experience and interests cover: - All aspects of social work with children and families, including law, policy and procedures; values and ethics; theory and its application to social work practice. - Critical and radical social work. - Research methods and methodology. - Practice education for social work
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Sarah-Jo continues to be involved in research and knowledge exchange related to domestic abuse. As a practising social worker, she became increasingly concerned about the extent to which child to mother violence and abuse was a feature in families known to Children's Social Care and the familiar pattern of women being blamed for their experiences of abuse. Examining the issue from a feminist perspective, Sarah-Jo's research considered the relationship between domestic abuse and 'mother abuse' and the implications for developing effective responses to this issue. Sarah-Jo has also been part of a team of researchers commissioned to undertake two evaluations of projects located in the East Midlands, funded through the Government's Domestic Abuse Innovation Fund; one focused on extending and improving service provision for women fleeing domestic abuse who use substances and have mental ill-health; the other on extending refuge provision and outreach services to women who have no recourse to public funds. Most recently, Sarah-Jo was part of an evaluation team focused on a regional strategy to recruit foster carer and supported lodgings providers for unaccompanied refugee minors. She is currently focused on disseminating findings from this evaluation and developing a research proposal to follow up the evaluation findings.