Dr Lesley Deacon’s Social Care Research Fellowship is jointly funded by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC) and the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) Hub delivered by Newcastle University and Partners.
Background
Lesley is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Vice Chancellor’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Fellow (2023–2025) at the University of Sunderland, Senior Fellow AdvanceHE, and a registered Social Worker (Social Work England).
She describes herself as a neurodivergent, academic-based practitioner researcher and, primarily focuses on participatory practice research to understand complex areas such as neurodiversity, isolation and loneliness, safeguarding and the experiences of parent-carers.
She has developed a new approach to empower practitioners (across a range of professions) to engage in, and lead, practice research – Facilitated Practice-based Research (copyright University of Sunderland) (FPR). This model is neurodiverse- and trauma-informed and consists of an intensive, facilitated, research programme in which a group of practitioners work together to co-design, co-construct and co-implement a piece of practice research relevant to current practice issues.
As a neurodivergent person, Lesley combines her lived experience with practice and research, into creating spaces that are neuro-comfortable i.e. open and accessible, acknowledging all neurological diversity.
Summary of research project
Having completed a five-year Participatory Action Research project to develop FPR, Lesley is now constructing a five-year impact evaluation study to explore the impact of FPR on practitioners, practice and organisations, and developing the second year of the FPR programme.
She is also working with a group of parent-carers (of neurodivergent children), to inform research to understand their experiences of different professionals.
Areas of interest:
- Practice, Practitioner & Participatory Research
- Neurodiversity
- Safeguarding
- Parent-carers
Recent publications:
Deacon. L. (2023) ‘Facilitated Practice-based Research: A model of Empowerment to Reduce Research Anxiety in Social Work Practitioners and Reframe Cultural Capital, European Journal of Social Work Research, 1(1), pp.102–117.
Deacon, L. (2022) ‘Emancipatory Practice Development in Social Welfare Service Evaluation – a worked example’, International Practice Development Journal. 12(1), pp.1–8
Deacon, L., Macdonald, S.J. and Donaghue, J. (2020) ‘“What’s wrong with you, are you stupid?”: Listening to the biographical narratives of adults with dyslexia in an age of “inclusivity” and “anti-discriminatory” practice’. Disability & Society, ISSN 0968-7599, pp.1–21.
Deacon, L., Macdonald, S.J. and Nixon, J. et al. (2019) ‘The Loss: Conceptualising Biographical Experiences of Disability, Social Isolation and Emotional Loneliness in North-East England’. Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 20(3), pp.68–87.
Get in touch
Email: [email protected]
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0031-2445