How Can the Literature on Phenomenology Inform the Teaching of Accurate Empathy in Social Work Practice?

Abstract

The ability to demonstrate empathy is identified as a key social work attribute by the professional regulator and other professional bodies as well as in government guidance and the relevant QAA Subject Benchmark Statement. Empathy is strongly linked to the ability to learn from experience and, as such, has relevance beyond social work to higher education in general. This paper will focus on how a phenomenological approach to theorising empathy might provide a framework for the development of the social work curriculum. I argue that representational accounts of interpersonal understanding offer a conception of empathy that is both limited and hubristic. From a representational perspective, empathy involves making informed guesses about the experiences of other people, often described using the overused metaphor of ‘walking in their shoes’ (Lathrop & Parish 1895). In contrast, an enactivist understanding of interpersonal relations, based on a phenomenological approach, provides a more hopeful and socially just basis for social work practice. It also has clear implications for teaching approaches and curriculum design in social work education including a focus on the student- teacher relationship, embodied practice, and more effective use of simulation.

Keywords:

• empathy
• enactivism
• intersubjectivity
• phenomenology

Introduction

This article aims to contribute to the understanding within social work education of the processes by which students learn to empathise. I shall define empathy as the ability to understand, and to convey understanding of, the thoughts and feelings of another person. I shall argue that a phenomenological approach to theorising empathy can be used to inform the curriculum of qualifying social work programmes. I shall conclude that a phenomenological approach has positive implications for both social work and social work education as socially just and inclusive activities.

The ability to demonstrate empathy is identified as a key social work attribute within the Social Work England Professional Standards (SWE 2019 2.4), the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) for Social Work (BASW 2018), the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Adults (DoH 2015) and the Subject Benchmark Statement for Social Work in Higher Education (QAA 2019 5.16 (v)). Empathy is strongly linked to the ability to learn from experience and, as such, has relevance beyond social work to higher education in general.

It is incumbent on social work educators to explore what role the university might play in better preparing students to form effective empathic relationships in a work environment. This is particularly important in UK Higher Education Institutions because many social work undergraduates arrive at university directly from full time secondary education with limited life experience of the issues they will face in their chosen profession. This lack of experience has been exacerbated by the impact of the COVID19 pandemic on students’ formative experiences. I believe that incorporating a phenomenological approach to the teaching of empathy in the classroom will enhance student experience and also benefit the people students work with on placement and later as qualified professionals.

Materials and Methods

This article is not a systemic review, but I have used keywords (phenomenology, empathy, intersubjectivity, social work, education, pedagogy) to create search terms in order to identify relevant literature. I have used additional literature about experiential learning to apply a phenomenological understanding of empathy to social work education.

Results

Empathy and Its Importance in Social Work

The concept of empathy first emerged in the late nineteenth century, and the term has various meanings within different professional contexts (Aragona, Kotzalidis, and Puzella 2013). In person centred counselling, empathy is one of three ‘core’ conditions for an effective therapeutic relationship (Rogers 1957). In this context, empathy is about understanding the other person in order to effect change. It is not necessarily about emotional connection, which is covered by the other core conditions (‘congruence’ and ‘unconditional positive regard’). Empathy in counselling and psychotherapy more broadly may range from a simple recognition of someone’s feelings to a detailed understanding of the meaning their experience holds for them (Bohart and Greenberg 1997). In medicine, empathy involves both understanding the experience of a patient, and communicating both this understanding and an intention to help (Assing Hvidt et al. 2022). In nursing, the function of empathy is to relieve feelings of distress (Williams and Stickley 2010). Empathy in social work may have any or all of these aims and may also inform assessment.

I shall follow Van Dijke et al. (2020) in understanding empathy as a two-way process that includes both its expression by one person, and the recognition of its accuracy by another. This process may include changing the other person’s experiences as well as understanding them (Barkham and Shapiro 1986). Segal (2011) further distinguishes ‘individual’ from ‘social’ empathy, the latter involving a critical awareness of social context. I would argue that in social work all empathy should be ‘social’ empathy.

Empathy involves both affect (instinctive emotional resonance with the other person) and cognition (reasoned interpretation) (Howe 2013). Empathy requires mental flexibility (Leung and Yung 2022) and awareness of both self and other (Williams and Stickley 2010). Some cognitive scientists have suggested that different aspects of empathy (such as shared affect and shared perspective) are enacted through distinct neurological processes (Surguladze and Bergen-Cico 2020) although this has also been disputed (Levy and Bader 2020). There is also a third, behavioural, element to empathy, and we can learn skills to enhance our ability to empathise (Adelman, Rosenberg, and Hobart 2016). The consensus across disciplines, however, is that empathy is not itself a skill, but a process associated with a relationship (Mearns and Thorne 2013).

It is essential for social work students to learn to empathise with people who are going through adverse life experiences (Frank et al. 2020). Empathy is often discussed together with compassion and the two concepts are connected within the seventh domain of the PCF (BASW 2018): At entry level, social work students need to be able to ‘engage with people with empathy’, but in subsequent levels of capability the language of ‘compassion’ is used. This implies that compassion is empathy put into practice and, while recognising that compassion is itself a contested term, I shall adopt this as a useful working definition. My focus will be on empathy as prior to, and more fundamental than, compassion (Morgan 2017, Englander 2019).

Theories of Empathy

To understand empathy, we need to understand the process of ‘intersubjectivity’ by which we transcend individual subjective experience in order to share experiences with others. In the literature of philosophy and the cognitive sciences, there are three broad approaches to intersubjectivity, these being ‘theory theory’, ‘simulation theory’ and phenomenological approaches (Ratcliffe 2012). The first two approaches are representationalist. For representationalists, perception involves encountering mental objects that represent objects in the external world. On a representationalist view, we never have direct experience of other people, but instead make inferences based on our internal representations. ‘Theory theory’ involves applying a set of generalised law like rules about other people’s cognitive processes in order to hypothesise what they might be feeling. According to ‘simulation theory’, we do not use general rules, but our own experiences to model what other people might be experiencing. Simulation theory underpins the concept of ‘projection’ in the literature of psychology and psychotherapy, where empathy is understood as a representation of the other person’s experience (Aragona, Kotzalidis, and Puzella 2013).

Representationalist theories have been used in cognitive science to provide explanatory mechanisms for empathy (Fuchs and De Jaegher 2009). Sometimes these involve a combination of ‘theory theory’ and ‘simulation theory’, with an early ‘simulation’ component (e.g. our own emotional response to someone’s behaviour) followed by a cognitive (theory) component in which we hypothesise about what that behaviour means (Aragona, Kotzalidis, and Puzella 2013). Representationalist descriptions of other minds do not, however, explain why knowledge of other minds is possible using these methods (Jensen and Moran 2012). Van Rhyn, Barwick, and Donelly (2021) question the validity of using our own experiences to understand other people because we cannot assume that human experience is homogeneous. Worse still, because they provide no guarantee of insight into another person’s conscious experience (Van Dijke et al. 2020), representationalist theories leave us vulnerable to solipsism (scepticism about other minds).

Phenomenological approaches, in contrast, propose that we can have direct experience of other people’s minds (Crossley 1996). In the early twentieth century, Edmund Husserl introduced the idea that explorations of the world should initially involve not theorising but carefully describing our experience. Phenomenology is the term used to describe a broad series of approaches that have grown from Husserl’s original idea, and may be defined as the study of the structures of the first-person experience of consciousness (Stanford 2013). Phenomenological approaches differ from representationalist approaches because they require us to pay attention to the unique interaction between an individual and their environment, without trying to explain this experience using general rules or the application of a model. Phenomenology asserts that representationalist approaches are mistaken because there is no objective truth about subjective experience (Merleau Ponty & Landes 2012). From a phenomenological perspective, we do not live in a world full of objective facts that we can never know. Instead, we live in a world constructed from multiple subjective perspectives. From a phenomenological perspective, subjectivity is an essential part of the way in which we construct reality, not something to be overcome in a search for objective truth (Moran 2000). Phenomenology does not provide a direct argument against solipsism, but overcomes it by accepting what is presented as genuine, albeit partial, truth about the world. We may be wrong about other people’s subjective experiences, but we have no need to doubt their existence. Following Husserl, phenomenologist philosophers began to stop focussing on the individual, cartesian self who deduces the external world from their own experience (Cottingham 2017) and instead gave primacy to what took place between subjects (Biesta 1999). This lead to the idea that our identities as individuals emerge in the context of our relationships to others (Merleau-Ponty & Landes 2012). This approach is also associated with ‘enactivism’, the proposal that we don’t exist in an environment, but that we and our environment are co-constructed. For enactivists, we only perceive because we are our bodies, and exist as part of the sensible world. We come into being as individuals through social interaction (Biesta 1999). Our understanding of ourselves and other people is mediated through our experience of being embodied (Whiting 2021).

On an enactivist view, bodily gestures and verbal expressions aren’t representations of emotions, but the emotions themselves (Abram 1996): Our own thoughts and feelings are embodied performances, accessible to us through observation of our own behaviour in the same way as we access the thoughts and feelings of other people. We learn to describe our own mental states by observing our behaviour in the context of social rules and we only learn to hide sensations like pain from other people after having previously experienced them in the shared world (Crossley 1996). We do not require representations of the view of the other in order to understand and communicate with them. Instead, we can have direct access to the experiences of others through their behaviour (Zahavi 2019), including speech which is meaningful to us in the context of shared rules (Wittgenstein 1986). Empathy is not about having the same feeling as someone else then attributing that feeling to them, but about experiencing the feeling as belonging to the other person (Stein 2016).

It is, however, important to be cautious about our ability to empathise. A phenomenological approach asserts a direct connection with others but not direct access to their subjective experience. There can still be failures of empathy because we can be wrong about someone else’s thoughts and feelings just as we can have misperceptions (Fernandez and Zahavi 2020). Tsang (2017) points out the dangers of being overly optimistic about our ability to understand other people when there are significant practical barriers. Through discussion, however, we can address discrepancies in our perception and co-construct shared meaning (Merleau-Ponty & Landes 2012). Indeed, this is part of the process of empathy: the term ‘mutual incorporation’ (Fuchs and De Jaegher 2009 p.472) describes the way in which two people form a system where meaning is co-created in a way that neither of them could have produced alone. The absence of objective truth about subjective experience does not mean that empathy is unimportant, but precisely the opposite: Our ability to change the situations in which we are involved as social workers makes considerations of power crucial to every interaction, including the need to recognise cultural norms and the social construction of risk (Smeeton and O’Connor 2020).

There are ethical as well as practical implications of the way in which we understand empathy. Simulation theory terminology describing the use of models to ‘enter’ another person’s world implies a one-sided invasion, even violation, of space (Van Dijke et al. 2020, 4). A phenomenological approach should instead involve a mutual reaching out and receptivity (Van Dijke et al. 2020). This is Buber’s (1970) ‘I-Thou’ relationship in which we relate to others as people not objects. It also fits well with Honneth’s assertion that we can only experience ourselves through being recognised and respected by others (Fraser and Honneth 2003). A descriptive phenomenological approach alone is insufficient and we need to move from a description of our initial perceived experience towards an understanding of our encounter with the other person. ‘Interpretative’ or ‘Hermeneutic’ Phenomenology is the name given in research to the process that allows us to do this (Pringle et al. 2011). The process of building empathy is iterative, as we repeatedly check and refine our understanding of the other person’s experience by asking questions. Each stage in the process involves further interpretation and this is known as the ‘double hermeneutic’ (Grix 2018, 95). In short, we can use phenomenology to provide an account of empathy as unmediated, co-constructed understanding of another person. It differs from, but is no less valid than, first person experience.

Discussion

Implications for Social Work Practice

A phenomenological approach can provide us with the language we need to describe authentic, ethical relationships in social work. We need to focus on the value and meaning that people place on their experience (Smeeton and O’Connor 2020). Poole and Higgo (2017) write that phenomenological assessment requires empathy. On this view, however, the reverse is more accurate: Empathy requires accurate assessment using observation and communication skills.

This approach also recognises the significance of the worker as an embodied part of the situation (Walsh 2019). Empathy incorporates a stance of openness to others, and a willingness to affect and be affected by them (Ratcliffe 2012). Each time a social worker meets someone in the course of their work, they change and are changed by the encounter (Newberry 2012). If, as enactivists believe, our identities are co-constructed within each encounter, then the perspective of the social worker impacts both the assessment outcome and the identity of the person being assessed. Erikson and Englander (2017) carried out qualitative research with social workers in Sweden and found no evidence that knowing detailed information about a person’s background was necessary for empathy in professional social work practice.

Empathy isn’t, however, automatically part of our experience and seeing people, especially those who think very differently from us, as subjects not objects requires effort (Morgan 2017). Social conditioning can lead to us to ‘other’ some groups of people (Ratcliffe 2012). The phenomenological tactic of ‘epoche’ (Magri 2018) involves suspending our ‘common sense’ beliefs in order to better understand the perspective of the other (Smeeton and O’Connor 2020). When we are able to empathise successfully, assessment becomes about co-constructing knowledge. The empathic relationship itself helps people to take control of the meaning of their experiences (Howe 2013) and this will often include reinterpretation of their experience of trauma.

I have argued that there is no objective truth about subjective experience. This is not, however, the same as there being no objective matters of fact about the material world. A phenomenological approach is not intrinsically antithetical to science but contends that the scientific method cannot provide a fully exhaustive account of the truth (Zahavi 2019). This sits well with a paradigm based account of scientific method which sees scientific theory as a current best fit understanding of the world that is subject to change (Kuhn 1970). It is also possible to draw an analogy with an understanding of physical objects as acquiring properties by virtue of their interactions (Rovelli 2022). Truths about a situation will include physical events that have lead to social work intervention as well as relevant existing laws and policies. Examples of physical events which have the status of truth in social work might include taking a prescribed medication, hitting someone, or receiving a sum of money. As we move beyond the ‘epoche’ to develop an interpretation of the situation we will need to incorporate differing understandings of these events within the constraints of established physical truths. This may ultimately mean that the outcome of an assessment is the imposition of an action with which the person disagrees. Including the assessed person as an active participant in constructing the meaning of a situation, however, puts considerations of power at the centre of empathic communication and decision making (Van Dijke et al. 2020). A phenomenological approach also encourages a social work practice informed by understanding of the impact of a person’s previous relationships and their experiences of trauma on their view of the world (Ruch, Turney, and Ward 2010).

Implications of Enactivism for Social Work Education

Social work education embraces an experiential approach (Segal 2011): Broadly speaking, ‘experiential learning’ means learning by living through an event. We restructure our previous understandings through an active process of reflection (Moon 2004) in which they are explored and adjusted as part of a feedback cycle (Kolb 1984). Our thoughts and feelings are integral to this (Boud, Keogh, and Walker 1985). An experiential account of the learning process is strikingly similar to the description of intersubjectivity used in interpretative phenomenology, and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle can easily incorporate ‘epoché’.

An enactivist view of ourselves and our environment as co-created validates the concept of ‘reflection in action’ (Schon 1983), where professionals develop competence in the context of previously having received feedback that our own feeling of ‘rightness’ corresponds to a positive perception of our actions by someone else. Workers need to pay close attention to the information they are getting from all their senses and emotional responses (Whiting 2021, Throop & Zahavi 2020). Repeatedly using ‘epoche’ to change which aspects of a situation we choose to focus on can change our ‘natural attitude’ (Houston 2022, 42). This is a form of skills practice that allows students to develop abilities to identify subtle details of gesture, facial expression and gaze (Gallagher 2011) and this may in turn help them to establish empathy. This does not, however, remove the need for feedback telling them when the other person feels understood (Assing Hvidt et al. 2022). Epoche suspends our certainty because there is no certainty, and encourages us to collaboratively explore our own assumptions together with others as part of the ‘double hermeneutic’ process (Grix 2018). Bearing in mind considerations of power, feedback may be provided directly by the person themselves, or by an experienced worker observing the interaction. Students can learn in this way to trust their embodied experience of other people’s emotions (Baxter Magolda 2009) as guides to (although never guarantees of) empathic understanding.

Students embodied in a situation should also be able to learn by observing another person empathising accurately. They should be encouraged to focus on how watching or listening to an interaction evokes a physical response in themselves. This will remain the case even when the observation is of an event in another time and place e.g. watching a video or reading a written account. Schmidsberger and Löffler-Stastka (2018) suggest teaching empathy through the use of exercises to develop awareness of all our senses, including those of our internal processes. Their findings are based on a study in which medical students observed their own bodily resonances while watching documentary footage or taking part in a simulation with actors. They then compared these with those of peers as part of a facilitated group. Similarly, Gerdes and Segal (2011) advocate the use of mindfulness practices to support students to develop self and other awareness. A focus on embodiment doesn’t mean that online relationships are any less valid than face to face encounters, but the more immediately a student is physically involved in a situation, the more sensory input they will receive and the more powerful their learning experience.

A number of programmes including embodied interaction have been developed to teach empathy in Higher Education. Frank et al. (2020) have developed a programme in which social work students prepare and share a hot meal with people who use local community services, then take part in a discussion. The students experience an interaction in which all their senses are engaged, and they also receive feedback. Englander (2019) teaches students ‘thou-orientation’ using recorded conversations that are then discussed with a facilitator. In this way, students learn to shift their attention to someone else’s lived bodily experience. Pohontsch et al. (2018) also recommend the use of guided reflection for empathy education. In a systematic review of interventions to teach communication skills to social work students, Reith-Hall and Montgomery (2022) found evidence that student empathy can be enhanced by skills practice in both real and structured environments, although they qualify their findings by pointing out the lack of an agreed definition of empathy across the studies.

Ignoring structural barriers to learning risks translating social inequality into academic difference (Mann 2008). Learning through experience requires opportunities to reflect that may not be available to students in shared accommodation, those with caring responsibilities and those who need to do significant amounts of paid work to support themselves financially. To counteract time poverty, students could be given opportunities to learn techniques such as mindfulness or journaling during timetabled classes. Once students have developed relevant skills, a phenomenological approach to social work assessment need not necessarily require more time than a more procedural approach: Social workers who fully engage with the people they work with are likely to understand their situations quickly and accurately and to be able to communicate proposed interventions effectively.

Reith-Hall and Montgomery (2022) point out that self-report can tell us little about empathic accuracy meaning that written work alone will be inadequate to assess a student’s ability to encounter another person empathically (Moon 2004). Nor will the assessment of observable and measurable communication skills be sufficient to measure empathy (Williams and Stickley 2010). A phenomenological approach to assessment supports the use of both formative and summative assessment using a combination of direct observation and feedback from people working with the student, followed by reflective discussion.

Simulation Exercises as a Tool for Empathy

An enactivist understanding of ourselves as embodied beings doesn’t, however, preclude the use of interactive models to enhance our interpersonal understanding (Englander 2019). It is important to distinguish the use of models, (also described as simulations) where students have real embodied experiences from the use of ‘simulation theory’ (the representationalist approach that uses models as part of a disembodied conjecture about an external world). Models don’t explain students’ experiences of empathy, but they can be used to support students to develop their practice (Luft and Schlimme 2013).

The use of simulation exercises is supported by Levett-Jones, Cant, and Lapkin (2019), who carried out a systematic review of the effectiveness of 23 small scale studies of empathy education for undergraduate nursing students. Only nine studies lead to statistically significant measured improvements in empathy, and these were identified through self-report and without long term follow up. Again, varying definitions of empathy made comparisons difficult. Levett-Jones et al. convincingly argue, however, that empathy education is effective when it involves an immersive experience followed by the opportunity for guided reflection. For example, the use of ‘point of view’ software to give students an experience of the perspective of a person with a specific disability or health condition. Another example is the game ‘In Her Shoes’ (Adelman, Rosenberg, and Hobart 2016) where participants physically move through the game environment as they make decisions for their character, a woman experiencing domestic abuse.

The use of simulation exercises involving actors is also well established in professional education. An enactivist approach suggests, however, that we should use role play with caution: It will enhance communication skills, but will not allow students to experience empathy in the same way as ‘real play’ discussions of situations actually experienced by the participants. From a phenomenological perspective, a student’s interaction with a video simulation, an actor or another student are all embodied encounters and as such will involve opportunities for empathic connection. If we understand personal identity as coming into being through intersubjectivity, an encounter with an actor is no less genuine than any other interaction. Indeed, in social work, participants in a discussion have agreed roles (e.g. that of ‘social worker’ or ‘person with lived experience (PWLE)’) and could be considered to be acting a part. The information from a simulation will, however, be about the interaction between the student and the actor, not the interaction between the student and the imaginary person in the scenario. The student may be confused by any mismatch between the surface communication and the actual feelings of the actor. The scenario may also be less rich in information because the actor is sharing information about the imagined life of another, and not their own.

Teaching Empathy Using Empathy

A phenomenological approach to professional education puts observing and enacting the social work role at the centre of student learning (Dall’Alba 2009). If professional knowledge and identity are co-constructed through intersubjectivity, then social workers need to question their own views and locate themselves within a power structure. This means that students also need to learn to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty in their relationships with the people they work with and this can be unsettling (Berzoff and de Lourdes Mattei 1999). It is important for students to retain a sense of self so as not to become overwhelmed (Gerdes and Segal 2011). Teachers can support students through this process by using empathy to meaningfully reframe concepts thereby aiding understanding, and supporting students to develop mental flexibility (Northedge and McArthur 2009). In short, we can use empathy to teach empathy.

As discussed above, understanding someone else’s experience involves understanding underlying structural factors (Segal 2011). The ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ involves teaching students from majority groups about their own implication in the suffering of other people (Bialystok and Kukar 2018). There is a danger, however, that this could encourage students to focus more on themselves and how they are perceived than on the experiences of others. Moreover, if students are only encouraged to develop empathy for marginalised groups, this may reinforce epistemic privilege and ‘othering’. Mann (2008) warns about expecting students to think and act in ways that serve the interests of dominant groups and, as educators, we need to consider whether we are expecting students to manifest ‘empathy’ in a way that is class or culture bound. A phenomenological approach to empathy addresses concerns about epistemic privilege by ensuring that students are taught about empathy as something grounded in a respectful interpersonal encounter.

The aim of social work education is to allow students to re-evaluate their assumptions in the context of a professional ethical framework. One technique for doing this is ‘strategic empathy’ (Zembylas 2012, 113) which involves challenging oppressive or discriminatory attitudes by initially demonstrating empathy with students’ ‘troubled knowledge’. A representationalist model of empathy as our best guess about someone else’s feelings would suggest that the authenticity of the teacher is compromised by hiding their true views from students (Bialystok and Kukar 2018). From a phenomenological perspective, however, empathy is a process of exchange and teachers can be both empathic and authentic when they disagree with a student.

A phenomenological approach also encourages a more inclusive approach to teaching by making learning a collective endeavour. Biesta (1999) points out the contradiction of continuing to think in terms of individuals to whom intersubjectivity needs to be explained. Instead of imparting knowledge, teachers learn to teach through our embodied interactions with students (Dall’Alba 2009). Again, this involves subversion of ‘expert’ power (French and Raven 1959) and recognition of the changing nature of the social work community of practice. If our identity emerges through our interactions with others, then our community of practice is not static but comes into being afresh as each social work practitioner joins it (Biesta 1999) and also as each practitioner interacts with the people they meet through work. This understanding of community challenges the power of established groups and institutions. By challenging the idea of objective social truths (as opposed to physical facts) a phenomenological approach also provides a theoretical underpinning for both anti-oppressive practice and person-centred approaches by ensuring that we consider power when balancing alternative perspectives as part of assessment.

Conclusions

In conclusion, enactivism, built on a phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity, is a powerful theory for explaining empathy in social work and can also be used to explain the apparent effectiveness of experiential learning with a focus on embodiment for empathy education. A phenomenological approach locates considerations of power and social justice as central to empathy education. It provides a pedagogical as well as a social justice rationale for involving people with lived experience of social work interventions in both teaching and assessment. It also explains why teachers should treat students with empathy.

As social work educators, we should constantly seek opportunities to fully engage students’ senses and to direct their attention to their bodily experiences as learners.

Used carefully, role play and other simulation exercises can be powerful sources of information for students about their impact on others, their own experience of this impact and the important part this plays in assessment. Phenomenology teaches us, however, to be wary of understanding empathy as a social work ‘skill’ as opposed to a process.

Acknowledgements

This project was completed as part of study for a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice at Lancaster University. My thanks to my supervisor, my departmental mentor, and other colleagues for their support.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clare Brown

Clare Brown is a registered social worker and practice educator whose main experience is within statutory services for adults. Her academic qualifications are BA Physics and Philosophy (Balliol College Oxford, 1995), MA/DipSW Social Work (Goldsmith’s College, University of London, 2001), Postgraduate Certificate with Distinction in Mental Health Practice (University of Central Lancashire, 2016) and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, FHEA 2022. She has worked at Lancaster University as a lecturer in the Social Work Department since 2021 and continues to practice as an Approved Mental Health Professional for Lancashire County Council. Correspondence to: Clare Brown, Social Work, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Email: [email protected]