Miss Ella Watson
(she/her)

BSc MSc

Teams and roles for Ella Watson

Research student
School of Social Sciences

I am an ESRC funded PhD student working within CASCADE, the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre at Cardiff University. My research aims to explore the impact of substance misuse on longer term outcomes for high risk young people.

My previous research experience has been with academics in the Cardiff University School of Psychology. I completed a year-long placement with the Neurodevelopmental Assessment Unit (NDAU) within CUCHDS, the Cardiff University Centre for Human Developmental Science, which is also where my MSc Children's Psychological Disorder course was based.

My core research interests concern how adverse experiences throughout childhood and adolescence may inform later outcomes for individuals, particularly concerning their mental health. I am particularly interested in the outcomes and experiences of those who have experience of care or adoption.

I have previously completed research on hot and cold executive functioning in neurotypical and neurodiverse children using fNIRS imaging.

My recent Masters dissertation focused on a general psychopathology factor, known as 'p-factor', and how this might be relevant for assessing at-risk children.

Thesis

Exploring the Impact of Substance Misuse on Longer Term Outcomes for High Risk Young People

My research will investigate the impact of substance misuse on outcomes for high risk young people. The aim of my research is to compare outcomes for high risk young people with different experiences of social care (grouped based on their placement type, age at entry to the care system etc.), whilst also determining which groups are more vulnerable to substance misuse issues.

Risk factors for substance misuse include poor mental health, exclusion from school, parental substance or alcohol misuse among many others, although it is sometimes difficult to establish whether these risk factors result in, or are consequence of, substance misuse. I will be using linked adminstrative data to complete this work. I will be working with SAIL datasets including social care, health and education data, which will allow me the opportunity to perform an in depth analysis of how substance misuse affects outcomes for high risk young people.

I hope that this research may offer some insight into the specific mechanisms at play between substance misuse in early life and poor outcomes later on. This project also offers an opportunity to understand more about how care experience may be an exacerbating factor in the context of substance misuse for some young people, whereas it may serve as a protective factor for others. Understanding more about the specifics of the care experience here will be key, which could have future policy implications.

Funding sources

I am an ESRC funded student.

I completed my bachelors degree in Psychology with a professional placement, graduating in Summer 2022 from Cardiff University. I have recently completed my Masters degree in Children's Psychological Disorders, also at Cardiff University.