Dr June Thoburn

Dr June Thoburn is an emeritus professor of social work at the University of East Anglia. She qualified as a social worker in 1963 and worked in local authority child and family social work and generic practice in England and Canada before taking up a joint appointment (with Norfolk County Council) at UEA in 1979. As a founding director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family and of the Making Research Count collaboration , she has a particular interest in finding innovative ways of helping social workers to use knowledge from a range of sources in their practice. Her teaching and research have encompassed family support and child protection services for children and families in the community and services for children placed away from home, whether with family members, in foster care or with adoptive families. She recently completed a Leverhulme Foundation funded study of children in out-of-home care in 14 countries and has close links with researchers on child and family welfare issues around the world.

She is frequently asked to provide expert evidence (in the UK and abroad) in complex child welfare cases, and to undertake analyses of events leading to child deaths or serious injury. She was until recently vice chair of the GSCC and was awarded the CBE for services to social work in 2002. She is currently the chairperson of the Jersey Child Protection Committee.