Dr Nell Warner

(she/her)

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

Current Research

Returning Home from Care
I am currently carrying out a three-year Health and Care Research Wales Social Care Fellowship on Returning Home from Care.  It is exploring the factors that are associated with children being successfully reunited with their families after a period in care.  This includes practice to support reunification, as well as factors associated with the child, their parents and their local area.  It is also looking at the extent to which changes in reunification account for the increases in numbers of children in care. More information is available on the CASCADE website. The study will run until November 2026.

Special guardianship families in Wales: Experiences and support needs
I am a Co-Investigator of this Nuffield Funded Project looking at the support needs and experiences of children and families with Special Guardianship Orders.  I am leading the data linkage strand of the project, which is using data based in the SAIL Databank to build a profile of both children who receive SGOs, and their carers. See the CASCADE website for more information.

Previous Research

Parental Risk Factors and Children Entering Care
I am the Principal Investigator for this Health and Care Research Wales funded project looking at the relationship between household risk factors and the later entry of children into local authority care.  The study used routinely collected data from social services in Wales and linked it to data from health and education to look at the households children were living in before they entered care. It looked at the risk factors in the adults living in those households as well as child characteristics. More information is available on the CASCADE website. The study was completed January 2024.

Between May 2018 and September 2020 I worked on a range of projects being carried out at CASCADE Cardiff University for What Works for Children’s Social Care. This included contributing to evidence reviews and a number of empirical research projects.  Research projects included:

• Secure Accommodation, Completed September 2020 - I was part of the research team investigating the backgrounds and outcomes of young people referred to secure accommodation in England. The study used linked administrative data sets to compare the backgrounds and outcomes of young people placed in secure accommodation, with those who were referred but not placed. My role focused on the analysis of Children in Need data, to identify the young people’s prior involvement with children’s services.
• Higher Education of Care Experienced Young People, Completed May 2020 - This project was a mixed methods study seeking to understand the factors that are associated with care-experienced young people applying for Higher Education and how they can be supported to do so.  I led on the quantitative arm of the project, which used the Next Steps dataset to explore how the aspirations of care-experienced young people to apply for Higher Education differ from those who are not care experienced and how this changes over time.
• Outcomes Focused Supervision, Pilot Study, Completed January 2020 - This study was carried out in Birmingham Children’s Trust, and explored the feasibility of implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of Outcomes Focused Supervision in children’s services.  Data was being collected at three time points, from social workers, and social work supervisors, with limited data collected from the families they work with. I led on the quantitative analysis for the study.

Doctoral Research: Home Visiting Support for Parents in adverse situations, the nature of support and parental emotional well-being, completed 2018
My PhD examined the relationship between family circumstances, the nature of support and improvements in parental emotional well-being among families receiving home visiting support.  It was co-sponsored by Home-Start UK and the ESRC.  The Home-Start model of family support was used as a case study and the research carried out through the quantitative analysis of Home-Start’s administrative data.  Models were developed to explore changes in emotional well-being over the course of support among families in different circumstances and receiving different types of support.

Biography

After an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, I had an early career teaching secondary school science in both Cardiff and Uganda.  I then spent fourteen years working for the children’s umbrella organisation Children in Wales, in a policy and information-based role before returning to academia.   My PhD focused on home visiting support provided to families with young children by Home-Start UK.  It used Home-Start’s administrative data to look at how a family’s situation and the way support is provided, are related to changes in emotional well-being among parents receiving support.   I have been working as a Research Associate at CASCADE since May 2018, initially contributing to a wide range of projects being carried out for What Works for Children’s Social Care.  I was the Principal Investigator of a two-year, Health and Care Research Wales funded project looking at the relationship between household risk factors and the later entry of children into local authority care.  I am now carrying out a three-year Health and Care Research Wales Social Care Fellowship looking at the factors associated with children returning home from care.

Supervisions

Current supervision

Aimee Cummings

Research student

Ella Watson

Research student