Research
Sarah's research focus is on co-producing new ways of working within Early Help of child protection, and to challenge the current frameworks to ultimately improve outcomes for children and young people.
This work has supported developments in UK and International child protection and provided early intervention help via smartphone apps relating to managing risk and safeguarding. In this context, Sarah posits that ‘socio-technical’ change can occur. She is a strong advocate for social care practises and social work assessments moving towards the generational, digitally mobile childhoods of today. In this way, the technology becomes the mechanism for sharing information.
In addition to this primary line of research, Sarah’s keen interests and expertise sit in the areas outlined below.
Interests & Expertise
Understanding how a child's information travels through databases for social workers and multi-agency responses .
Technological accessibility for the safeguarding of children and young people.
Technology as enabler of potentially revolutionary ways of working with children and families in a digital world, with the potential to compliment - or even replace - the standard ‘front door referral’ route of a phone call or email (which must be accompanied by an electronic form in UK).
Digital self-referrals by children and young people.
A child’s journey and a digital, child-focused child protection system.
New digital and child-friendly conceptual frameworks for managing risk and sharing information.
Repositioning childhood within a social-technical, inter-generational childhood space.
Apps as a communication and information sharing for children and young people.
Research methodology in the development of mixed methods approaches - using creative techniques for children as equal research partners.
Child-centred, co-operative enquiry for the design and usability of safeguarding apps.
Research projects include:
Co-designing community resilience to online child sexual victimisation: Demonstration Project, Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre (2025)
Children's safeguarding digital co-design, Impact Acceleration Project Report, Economic & Social Research Council, Lancaster University & MeSafe (2023)
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Speaker & Judge
Sarah is an experienced and dynamic conference chair, keynote, panel member and moderator across multi-disciplinary professional and academic settings, and has worked across the globe, in-person and virtually.
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Consultancy
Sarah’s expertise as a consultant is wide-ranging in environments where children's social care meets technology. She specialises in advising on digital safeguarding strategies, and technical reporting pathways across organisational departments and in multi-agency settings.
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Social Care Tech Workshops
Sarah is a senior and seasoned facilitator, developing and delivering conferences, workshops, and development days tailored to the needs of stakeholders across the digital safeguarding and the social care sector.
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Safeguarding Supervision
Sarah has over two decades of experience working across multi-disciplinary sectors, all the while placing the lived experience and agency of children and adults at risk at the centre of safeguarding.
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