Overview

Siobhan’s background is in dance, training vocationally in ballet she developed an interest in health and wellbeing. Siobhan completed her MRes in Health and Wellbeing and was awarded an ESRC studentship in 2014 to complete her PhD exploring the psychosocial implications of maturity timing for children growing up in an elite dance training context.

Siobhan has worked in the Children & Young People’s Mental Health Research Collaboration since 2018, working across a range of projects. Most recently, The Children & Young People Social Prescribing for Mental Health Project (CHOICES) which aims to extend the growing evidence base around social prescribing in the primary care and public health arenas by focussing on its use for children and young people.

Siobhan also continues to work on projects relating to young people’s wellbeing in the dance sector. Most recently, Siobhan led the GuiDANCE project (Growing up in dance) in collaboration with partners from across the UK dance sector and funded by the ESRC IAA. This was a co-creation project which aimed to address the challenges associated with the pubertal transition in dance for young people and culminated in the creation of a set of guidelines for best practice in the dance sector. The continuation of this work has now been funded by the AHRC to support the development of the GuiDANCE Network which aims to create a network which can sustain this work going forward and to create tangible resources for the dance sector to share key messages and learning from our work to date.

Siobhan joined the Peninsula Mental Health Research Initiative (PenMHRI) in 2023 to support across key projects in relation to child and adolescent health. Specifically, Siobhan supports the SELF study, which explores the impact of delivering school based DBT for CYP who report self-harming, and CAMHS goes wild, which explores using nature-based approaches in CAMHS.

Qualifications

• PhD Health and Wellbeing (University of Bath)
• MRes Health and Wellbeing (University of Bath)
• MSc Dance Science (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance)

Links

• The Children & Young People Social Prescribing for Mental Health Project
• PenMHRI
• GuiDANCE Network

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Research

Research interests

Siobhan's research interests are in child and adolescent health and development. More specifically, exploring how to support child and adolescent development in different contexts through the implementation of novel approaches and interventions. 

Research projects

Current Projects:

• The SELF study - An Uncontrolled Feasibility Study to Examine the Impact of Delivering a Comprehensive School-Based Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (CSB‐DBT) for Young People Reporting Self-Harming Behaviour: the SELF study.
• CAMHS Goes Wild -  A mixed methods study to evaluate staff views and experiences of a new nature-based way of working with children and young people being treated in Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Cornwall.
• The GuiDANCE project (Growing up in dance: Enhancing education and creating sustainable practices in growth and maturation in the dance sector). An ESRC funded Impact Acceleration Co-creation project which aims to address the challenges associated with the pubertal transition in dance for young people.

Research grants

• 2022 NIHR Programme Grant
  Teenage depression knocks normal development off course and damages family relationships. Young people are more likely to get recurrent depression than people first depressed as adults. We need more options for young people who still have symptoms after treatment or relapse quickly, so we developed Mindfulness for Adolescents and Carers (MAC). Mindfulness-based cognitive-therapy (MBCT) is now an established treatment for adults with recurrent depression, yet is untested with young people. MAC is teenager friendly MBCT, which could helps young people avoid recurrent depression, and so reduce damage to their life chances and future health. This programme will have five parts that aim to: 1. Finalise training for practitioners to deliver MAC 2. Co-produce an app to support mindfulness skills practice 3. Test whether MAC works and is value for money 4. Find out how MAC works and for whom it works best 5. Understand how best we can scale up MAC

Links

• CAMHS Goes Wild
• SELF study
• GuiDANCE Network

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Publications

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External Engagement and Impact

Awards

Nominated for the One Dance UK Research in Dance Impact Award (2019)

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) PhD Studentship (2014-2018)

Recipient of the Healthy Dancer Canada Annual Research Award (2017)

Finalist, Ede and Ravenscroft prize, University of Bath (2017)

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