Associate Professor and Chair of the IASR Ethics Panel

Lisa’s research focuses on inter-professional approaches to health and social care, including reflective supervision to support building resilience in the helping professions and improve outcomes for people using services.

She has published extensively on multi-disciplinary working, including the factors that promote and hinder integrated working, why some aspects of multi-disciplinary working embed better than others and the experiences of people using health and social care services.

Lisa is particularly interested in the role of reflective supervision to support staff practice more effectively, promote inclusively and develop confident, capable and compassionate health and social care practitioners.

Lisa is Chair of the IASR ethics panel

Academic qualifications

• PhD Applied Social Science – University of Lancaster, 1994-1997
• BA(hons) Sociology with Social Policy (1:1) – University of Warwick, 1991-1994

Teaching Role

• PhD supervisor
• PQ Unit coordinator Reflective supervision in health and social care

Research Interests

• Improving organisational culture in integrated care
• Inter-professional reflective practice and staff supervision
• Systemic child and family social work
• Research ethics

Current Research Projects

Lisa is programme lead for building resilience across the helping professions within the Talk, Listen, Change (TLC) research programme, part of the Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes (BLMK) integrated care research hub. The resilience work programme aims to address retention of students and staff at all levels of experience in the helping professions via implementing:

• culturally competent teaching and learning framework to support the development of students’ emotional resilience and increase inter-professional empathy through a series of initiatives, including Schwartz Rounds
• co-producing an innovation web app called the iSort (integrated systemic organisational resilience toolkit) to support organisational and personal resilience via evidence-based workforce wellbeing strategies
• faciliating reflective practice groups to with up to 100 practice leaders to embed inter-professional reflexivity, reduce professional anxiety and promote anti-racist practice across the BLMK region

Lisa is leading development of a theory of change (TOC) for the NIHR-funded national evaluation of national evaluation of the multi-agency child safeguarding reforms

Recent Research Projects

Lisa led a series of evaluations of projects within the Department for Education (DfE) Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme, including:

• Scaling and deepening the Reclaiming Social Work (RSW)
• Scaling and deepening the RSW model: longitudinal follow up
• Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire (FSH)
• Havering Face to Face Pathways (F2FP)

During the height of the pandemic, she worked with the Contextual Safeguarding programme to support five local authorities implement contextually-informed approaches to safeguarding young people in the community.

External roles

• Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (secondment March 2017 – March 2018)
• Associate Editor, Journal of Children’s Services (December 2017-December 2020)

Publications

Book

• Bostock, L. (2016) (ed.) Interprofessional staff supervision in health and social care. Brighton: Pavilion publishing.

Articles in peer reviewed journals

• Bostock, L. and Koprowska, J. (2022) ‘I know how it sounds on paper’ Risk talk, the use of documents and epistemic justice in child protection assessment home visits. Special Issue: Conversation analysis in social work, Qualitative social work, 21(6), 1147–1166, DOI: 10.1177/14733250221124217
• Bostock, L., Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T. & Forrester, D. (2022) Why does systemic supervision support practitioners’ practice more effectively with children and families? Children and Youth Services Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106652
• Bostock, L., Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T. & Forrester, D. (2019) What is the impact of supervision on direct practice with families? Children and Youth Services Review, 105, 104-428, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104428
• Bostock, L., Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T., Munro, E. & Forrester, D. (2019) How do we assess the quality of supervision? Developing a coding framework, Children and Youth Services Review, 100, 515-524, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.03.027
• Bostock, L., Lynch, A., Newlands, F., & Forrester, D (2018) Diffusion theory and multi-disciplinary working in children’s services. Journal of Integrated Care, 26 (2), 120-129,https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-10-2017-0039
• Cameron, A., Bostock, L., Lart, R. (2014) Service user and carers perspectives of joint and integrated working between health and social care. Journal of Integrated Care. 22(2) 62-70, https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-10-2013-0042
• Cameron, A., Lart, R., Bostock, L. and Caroline, C. (2013) Factors that promote and hinder joint working between health and social care, Health and social care in the community
• Carpenter, J. Webb, C and Bostock, L. (2013) The surprisingly weak evidence base for supervision: findings from a systematic review of research in child welfare practice (2000-2012), Children and Youth Services Review, Volume 35, 1843-1853, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.08.014
• Bostock, L. (2004) By Private Arrangement? Safeguarding Private Foster Children, Children and Society, 18(1): 66-73, https://doi.org/10.1002/chi.802
• Bostock, L., Gleeson, B. with McPherson, A. and L. Pang (2004) Contested housing landscapes: deinstitutionalisation, social inclusion and housing policy in Australia, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 39(1): 41-62., https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2004.tb01162.x
• Mallinson, S., Popay, J., Elliott, E., Bennett, S., Bostock, L., Gatrell, A., Thomas, C., and Williams, G. (2003). Historical Data for Health Inequalities Research: a Research Note. Sociology, 37(4), 771–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/003803850303740
• Popay, J., Thomas, C., Williams, G., Bennett, S., Gatrell, A., Bostock, L. (2003) A proper place to live: health inequalities, agency and the normative dimensions of space, Social Science & Medicine, 57(1), Pages 55-69, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00299-X
• Popay, J., Bennett, S., Thomas, C., Williams, G., Gatrell, A., Bostock, L. (2003) Beyond ‘Beer, Fags, Egg and Chips’? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in health, Sociology of Health and Illness, Volume 25. Issue 1, 1-23, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.t01-1-00322
• Bostock, L. (2006) “God, she’s gonna report me”: Ethics, child protection and poverty research, Children and Society, Volume 16., Issue 4, 273-283, https://doi.org/10.1002/chi.712
• Bostock, L. (2001) Pathways of disadvantage: walking as a mode of transport among low-income mothers, Health and Social Care in the Community, Volume 9. Issue 1, 11-18, doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2524.2001.00275.x.

Book chapters

• Bostock, L. (2023) What do we know about multi-agency meetings to address extra-familial harm. In Firmin, C. and Lloyd. J. (eds.) Contextual safeguarding: The next chapter. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
• Bostock, L. (2016) Inter-professional supervision in services to adults: supervision, outcomes and what next for research and practice. In Bostock, L. (2016) (ed.) Inter-professional staff Supervision in health and social care. Brighton: Pavilion publishing, 89-92.
• Webb, C., Bostock, L., and Carpenter, J. (2016) Effective supervision in social work and social care: Findings from a systematic review of research in services to adults (2000-2012). In Bostock, L. (2016) (ed.) Interprofessional staff Supervision in health and social care. Brighton: Pavilion publishing, 23-30.
• Carr, S and Bostock, L. (2014) Appraising quality of evidence in Webber, M. (ed.) Applying research evidence in social work practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 44-58.
• Cameron, A., Lart, R. and Bostock, L. (2014) Innovations in joint working: where is the evidence? In Willumsen, E. Sirnes, T. and Ødegård, A. (eds.) Inter-professional collaboration in theory and practice: the next generation. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 157-170.
• Mallinson, S., Popay, J., Elliott, E., Bennett, S., Bostock, L., Gatrell, A., Thomas, C., and Williams, G. (2003) Historical Data for Health Inequalities. In Earle, S. and Letherby, G. The Sociology of Healthcare: A reader for health professionals. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Gatrell, A., Bennett, S., Bostock, L., Thomas, C., Popay, J., Williams, G., (2004) Local geographies of health inequalities, In Boyle, P., Curtis, S., Graham, E. & Moore. E. (eds.) The Geography of Health Inequalities in the Developed World: Views from Britain and America, Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 177-197.
• Bostock, L. (2003) Finding a Foothold? Transport policy, health inequality and the place of walking, in Symth, M. (ed.) Health Care in Transition: Issues and Policy, Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 20-31.
• Gatrell, A., Thomas, C., Bennett, S., Bostock, L., Popay, J., Williams, G., (2000) Understanding health inequalities: locating people in geographical and social spaces. In Graham, H. (ed) Understanding Health Inequalities. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 156-169.

Contact details

• Email: lisa.bostock@beds.ac.uk
• Mobile: 07734648974
• Profile on Researchgate.net
• Profile on LinkedIn.com
• Profile on X - @bos_doc