Laura L. Cook is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Director for the Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF). She teaches on the qualifying and CPD programmes within the school. Her research focuses on decision-making, professional judgement and retention in social work. She is particularly interested in the role of emotion and intuition in social workers’ assessment of risk.

Laura has a first class honours degree in Philosophy and Literature from the University of East Anglia, and an MA in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis from the University of Essex. Laura worked as a lecturer, tutor and journalist before returning to the University of East Anglia to study for her MA in Social Work. After qualifying, Laura worked in a children’s centre before joining the school as a research student in 2012. Laura became a lecturer in 2015. 

Laura's research focuses on decision-making in child safeguarding and workforce retention in social work. She recently led a major national review of practice education for Social Work England. Currently, she is leading the development of an intervention to support the retention of social workers in children, adult and mental health social work. Laura has worked on a number of high-profile research projects, including analyses of Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and Serious Case Reviews for the Department for Education.

Indicative projects:

Professional identity and retention among experienced child and family social workers (Funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust)

Final analysis of Serious Case Reviews for the period 2017-19 (Department for Education)

Annual review of Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (Department for Education)

National review of social work practice educaton in England (Social Work England)

Retaining social workers in health and social care (Norfolk Initiative for Coastal and Rural Health Inequalities)

Young peoples' transition from residential to foster care: an evaluation of Norfolk's Enhanced Fostering Service (Norfolk County Council)

Laura is a member of the Emotions at Work Research Group at UEA and is Director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families.