Staff profile

I was awarded a Masters in Social Work, majoring in Administration and Community Organisation, from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan before practicing as a social worker in child protection, family, and youth services in the United States. I then moved to Ireland practicing first in adult mental health services and later in social work education and social enterprise.

For the Astra Project, I will address Social Sustainability through using Participatory and Inclusive social work practice to promote sustainable communities. The objectives of my individual project are to:

• develop an understanding of social work practices building sustainable communities,
• build a model of evaluation for social work practices promoting sustainable communities;
• determine capacity to apply this model;
• analyse the transferability of this model in a range of service and community settings.

My research will use participatory methods to gather data from projects in England and Belgium.

• Participatory Research
• Community Development and Sustainability