Mon 23rd January, 2012
Social work expert Professor Donald Forrester is kicking off a series of professorial lectures at the University of Bedfordshire.
Open to the public, the series is an opportunity for external visitors, as well as students and staff, to consider serious social issues in an informal setting.
Professor Forrester is Director of the Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work and Social Care Research at the University and highly-respected in the social care research field.
His inaugural lecture is called ‘What works in helping people? Reflections on faith, hope and love in evidence-based social work’ and will take place on Wednesday, 25 January at the University’s Luton campus.
Professor Forrester said: “There are frequent calls for social work to be ‘evidence-based’, yet to date there has been little evaluation of different social work approaches.
“In my lecture I will review evidence from related fields such as substance misuse. I will also consider recent unexpected findings and their implications for understanding and researching helping relationships.”
Professor Forrester practised as a child and family social worker for ten years before becoming an academic. His primary focus has been on children affected by parental misuse of drugs or alcohol. This has led to a broader concern with developing robust research to find out what works in social work.
The Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work and Social Care is one of the leading centres for social work research in the UK. It is part of the Institute of Applied Social Research, which is hosting the lecture series. Each lecture will be outlining findings from a lifetime of work, including new and established research.
Next in the series is Professor Margaret Melrose speaking on child sexual exploitation on Monday, 19 March.
For more information and to book, visit www.beds.ac.uk/goldbergcentre
Latest news» 2012» January» Social work on Uni’s agenda as lecture series begins
