About

I am a registered social worker with ten years of professional experience. I made the switch to academia in 2023 and have since built up a range of teaching experience in Social Work and other Social and Community Studies programmes.

Teaching responsibilities

I teach on both the BA Applied Social Work and MA Social Work programmes. Aligned with my industry experience, I teach the Mental Health, Safeguarding Adults and Social Work Law modules. 

Research interests

• Suicide, including society's perception of suicide
• Domestic Abuse, particularly Coercive Control
• Teaching students with ADHD and Dyslexia
• High-control groups

Membership of professional bodies

• Registered with Social Work England (SWE)
• Member of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW)

Qualifications

• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and Leadership FHEA, University of Derby, February 2024
• Best Interests Assessor, Birmingham City University, September 2022
• Assessed and Supported Year in Employment, London Borough of Havering, February 2016
• BA(Hons): Social Work, University of Hull, July 2012

Experience in industry

As a student, I worked on placement at the Lighthouse Project, supporting women working in street-based sex work. This included supporting them with drug treatment programmes, child contact and maintaining tenancies. My second placement was in a local Community Mental Health Team supporting patients with psychotic disorders with social needs.

I worked in a families project in Hull once qualified, supporting families with a variety of needs including Social Services involvement, a parent in prison, low income and school exclusion. 

I moved into Mental Health Services in 2015, working in an Access and Assessment team in the London Borough of Havering. This experience proved invaluable as I was assessing a wide range of needs from a first episode of anxiety to a relapse of mania and everything in between. 

I worked in a mental health hospital from 2017. The patient group were women and trans women with serious mental health diagnoses, most were detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. I became the hospital's senior social worker in 2019. 

In 2020, I moved into military social work, taking on a senior role at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre's Neurorehabilitation ward. 

Additional interests and activities

I am passionate in my support for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. In 2017, I took a career break to work voluntarily at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesvos, receiving new arrivals and working on preventing trafficking through awareness and an ID system.

Recent publications

• Low, C. et al. (2023). Military Social Work in the United Kingdom. In: Forgey, M.A., Green-Hurdle, K. (eds) Military Social Work Around the Globe . Military and Veterans Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14482-0_11