My research interests are in anti-oppressive and anti-racist social work and anti-oppressive practice (AOP). The primary setting in which I focus most of my anti-racist or AOP attention is child welfare-a focus that emerges from the twelve years I spent undertaking child protection work in the UK and Canada.  The ways I currently combine my anti-racism and AOP interests with a child welfare focus is by researching the views of service users to develop "service users theory" and give voice to "subjugated knowledge." Current projects include:

Deaths Too Soon: An In-Depth Analysis of Child Abuse Homicide

Funded by the McMaster Arts Research Board ($5000) this pilot study awaits initiation in the coming months.

Your Policies our Children: Refugees Speak Through Photovoice about the Impact of Canadian Social Policy on their Children and Families

Funded by McMaster University Arts Research Board ($3,500.00) and a McMaster insentive grant ($5000). This pilot study uses Photovoice and Participatory Action Research to give parents who are refugees and refugee claimants a voice about the impact of current child and family social policy has on their children and families.

Funded by the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services ($126,465.00). I am a co-researcher on this project led by Principle Investigator Dr. Jim Gladstone. This one-year demonstration project partnered with seven Ontario Children’s Aid Societies will develop, refine, and pilot test measures that will be used in a 3-year research study to examine “worker-parent engagement” and determine how child welfare workers in Ontario can affect the worker-parent relationship to produce the best outcomes for children and families.