The SSCR Post-Doctoral Fellowships offer an opportunity for Fellows to develop careers in social care research, build collaborations and publish new findings. At the School for Social Care in Sheffield, two Fellowships have been awarded to Louis Stokes from the Neuroscience Institute and Tom Ryan, from the School of Education.
Tom’s fellowship will focus on care transitions in later life for people with learning disabilities, aiming to co-design a resource that can help families with future planning.
Tom said, “I'm really excited to get started on this project, it's a privilege to work with such exciting project partners.”
Louis will be working on co-designing and piloting a trauma-informed intervention to support care home staff experiencing grief and psychological distress.
Louis said, "I’m incredibly excited to undertake this work. Whilst studying, I worked as a healthcare assistant in care homes and saw first-hand the emotional demands placed on staff and how little support was available to help cope with grief, loss and the wider emotional toll of the role. The idea for the fellowship stemmed from a conversation with a care home manager who highlighted grief as an important but often overlooked challenge, and subsequent conversations with staff across care homes reinforced how significant and widespread the issue can be, and the need to develop practical, evidence-informed ways of better supporting the social care workforce. I am delighted to have been awarded the SSCR postdoctoral fellowship, and to have the opportunity to take this research forward, supported by a fantastic team of academics, colleagues working in care practice, and public contributors."
Katherine Runswick-Cole, Associate Director at The School for Social Care Research in Sheffield, said: "We are absolutely delighted that Tom and Louis will be joining the SSCR at Sheffield as post-doctoral research fellows. They bring their research interests to a thriving community in applied research for social care at the University of Sheffield. We look forward to working with them as they develop their research careers during these prestigious fellowships."
https://sscr.nihr.ac.uk/sscr-post-doctoral-research-fellowships-awarded/