Staff in Spotlight

Victoria Ball, Deputy Head of Learning Support

Vicki is well on her way to becoming an expert in the field of trauma informed practice after attending a training session in 2018 that sparked a real interest in the subject.

She, along with other colleagues, attended the training through the Association of Colleges, in combination with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as part of the Greater Manchester mental health in further education project. This ran for three years and as part of their recommendations came the suggestion that colleges could become more trauma informed.

Being part of this project was the catalyst for independent study for Vicki, who decided to embark on a professional doctorate through the University of Lancashire in 2021.

Having the benefit of already working in further education, Vicki’s research would focus on the wisdom from this sector, not just relying on the research that came from health, social care and early years settings.

“I wanted to know more about what trauma informed practice would look like in education but more specifically, in our FE college.”

Vicki conducted a participatory action research project in which all staff and students were invited to get involved in different ways.

This had the added benefit of enabling inclusivity and equality as both staff and students worked as equal partners to co-produce new knowledge, with their views being equally valued. Vicki’s group of co-researchers conducted data collection and data analysis, which was then disseminated and presented, to peers, HE students and academics at last year’s University Centre Wigan & Leigh College Higher Education Research Symposium.

Following this, Vicki entered the poster presentation into the University of Lancashire’s annual post grad research conference, where she claimed the top prize in the poster category, and winning a cash prize too.

What next?

“I am now in the process of writing a thesis, which I’m hoping to complete this academic year. I will then have to make a defence of my thesis which involves a three-hour cross examination by a panel of experts, to find out if I know what I am talking about.”

As her research was ethically complex, due to her wanting to include the views of students with learning differences and disabilities, Vicki has since spoken at conferences about making the information that university ethics committees need, accessible. She went on to explain:

“I became very interested in the ethics of the research process which has led me to becoming a member of The International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research (the ICPHR), where I sit on the ethics working group.”

This has also coincided with Vicki’s expertise being recognised by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, as she sits on their Disability Experts Panel.

Vicki is also a member of the Trauma-informed Approaches to Higher Education Network, which is a recent development in this field. She joins colleagues from the Universities of Hull, Sheffield Hallam and Oxford Brookes to name just a few. They are in the early stages of working together to embed trauma informed principles in higher education. Although a new initiative, connections have already been established with some of our local university partners, with a view to continuing the research in this area.

In order to share her research findings further, Vicki has submitted abstracts to several conferences later in the year, including the British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference which will be held at the University of Manchester in September.

Vicki added: “I’m really proud of the research I carried out with my co-researchers. How we did our research was just as important as the key findings that came from it. We embedded the college’s FREDIE values into the design, making it ethically more robust. Both staff and students reported that being involved in our project had been valuable and personally meaningful. We had a range of students from Level 1 – 3 as well as a mix of academic and business support staff, which I think was a real representative, cross section of our college community.

“Hopefully, our findings will be of interest to colleagues in FE/HE colleges related to trauma informed practice and also to the wider academic community. We demonstrated that inclusive research is not only possible, but more valid as a consequence.”