معرفی
Dr Linda Cusworth is a part-time Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Law at Lancaster University, specialising in quantitative social research and data linkage within the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research. She has held academic research appointments continuously since 2009, including a decade at the University of York’s Social Policy Research Unit before moving to Lancaster in May 2017.
Education: While no explicit degrees are listed, her extensive experience and role as a principal investigator on large-scale funded studies indicate advanced training in quantitative social research methods.
Research Interests:
- Child well-being and outcomes for vulnerable children and young people
- Child protection and family justice systems
- Looked-after children, care leavers, and permanence pathways
- Secondary analysis and linkage of administrative and cohort datasets
- Survey design, online data collection, and advanced quantitative methods
Her recent work analyses how area-level deprivation, local-authority spending, and family-court processes influence children’s journeys through the care system in England, Wales and Scotland. Employing large-scale administrative data (e.g., National Pupil Database, Health Episode Statistics, Born in Bradford cohort), she provides evidence to inform policy aimed at improving life chances for children unable to live with their birth parents.
Grants & Projects:
- Co-Investigator/Lead Researcher, £2.2 million Nuffield-funded Family Justice Observatory Data Partnership (2019–)
- Co-Investigator, Permanently Progressing? Phase Two (2020–2025)
- Co-Investigator, ESRC-funded comparison of children in care vs. child-protection plans (2014–2016)
- Co-Investigator, British Association of Adoption and Fostering study on permanence for under-fives in Scotland (2014–2018)
Doctoral Supervision: Dr Cusworth welcomes PhD candidates in private family law, public family law, child protection, looked-after children and adoption.
