Career Development Awardee
Conversations that count: Exploring dialogue between social workers and carers
I am a social worker with a background in dementia support and social worker training. This award will let me explore how social workers talk to carers of people living with dementia. I want to learn how these conversations can be made better.
Good conversations build trust between carers and social workers and lead to better results for families. Yet there is little evidence of what “good” practice looks like. I will review existing research and highlight gaps. I will run a small pilot study, filming a meeting between a social worker and a carer. I will then use a method called conversation analysis (CA) to study it. This will test if CA is a useful tool for future research.
I will look at other ways of doing research such as spending time with people to understand their daily lives. I will work with carers, people with lived experience, and social workers, to shape the research together.
To build my skills, I will train in scoping reviews, CA, ethnography, and narrative analysis. I will spend time with researchers at the Universities of York and Bradford. I will connect with others in the School for Social Care Research community.
This award will help me prepare a strong bid for more research funding. It will put me in a good position to lead projects that connect day-to-day social work with academic study. My aim is to improve social work with people living with dementia and their carers.
