Lisa Bostock

Deputy Director for Research

Dr Lisa Bostock is Deputy Director for Research within our Child, community and educational psychology (M4) professional doctorate programme. She was previously Associate Professor at the University of Bedfordshire, where she remains active in practice-focused research. Lisa has held the following leadership roles for research ethics:

• Chair of the Institute for Applied Social Research Ethics Panel (2018-2024)
• Leading implementation of research governance arrangements for the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (2016 – 2017)
• Ethics committee member of the Tavistock Research Ethics Committee (TREC) and the Approach Social Work ethics panel, Britain’s largest social work charity.

Her research focuses on therapeutically informed approaches to child welfare, specifically systemic social work practice. She has published extensively on inter-professional working, investigating why some aspects of multi-disciplinary working embed better than others to improve outcomes and experiences of people using services. Lisa is particularly interested in the containing role of group-based supervision to support staff at all levels practice more effectively, promote inclusively and reduce uncertainty and associated work-related anxiety.

She has a special interest in the role of digital technology to support practice improvement for service users and carers. She produced an early example of an interactive manual for the Anna Freud Centre.
The manual supports services set up an Early Years Parenting Unit (EYPU) for parents with personality difficulties whose children are at risk of entering the care system. Lisa is currently working on a web app to support organisational and personal resilience.

Current research projects

NIHR national evaluation of the multi-agency child safeguarding reforms leading the evaluation aspects by co-producing a theory of change (TOC) and associated monitoring, evaluation and learning framework for local child safeguarding partnerships (LSCPs).

NHSE projects to:

• co-produce an innovation web app called the iSort (integrated systemic organisational resilience toolkit) to support organisational and personal resilience via evidence-based workforce wellbeing strategies
• co-facilitate and evaluate reflective practice groups (RPGs) with senior leaders across health, social care and education to embed inter-professional reflexivity, reduce professional anxiety and promote anti-racist practice.

Lisa is a trained Schwartz Round™ facilitator. She co-led implementation of Schwartz@Beds for student nurses, social workers and trainee paramedics and operating department practitioners to come together to discuss the emotional impact of their training.

Recent research projects

Lisa was Principal Investigator (research leader) for a series of evaluations 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 Big Lottery-funded Contextual Safeguarding programme to support five local authorities implement contextually-informed approaches to safeguarding young people in the community.

Selected 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

• Bostock, L Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T. & Forrester, D. (2022) Why does systemic supervision support practitioners’ practice more effectively with children and families?

• Bostock, L., Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T. & Forrester, D. (2019) What is the impact of supervision on direct practice with families?

• Bostock, L., Patrizo, L., Godfrey, T., Munro, E. & Forrester, D. (2019) How do we assess the quality of group supervision? Developing a coding framework

• 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)

• 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

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
• 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.