Susie Hawkes is an independent social worker and academic. She qualified in 1999 and has over 24 years’ experience in frontline practice with children and families, including ten years as a team manager and child protection manager. Since 2017 she has also been working as an academic teaching and researching in the area of children and families’ social work.

In addition to having extensive experience with various local authorities undertaking a wide variety of assessments and interventions with children and families, Susie worked for Acorn Lodge in Sheffield where she specialised in parenting assessments and delivering support and training for parents with learning difficulties, drugs misuse, mental health, and domestic violence.

Susie has experience in analysing complex cases and was involved completing the Individual Management Report for the serious case review ED12. She currently straddles both academic work and social work practice through independent social work. Her range of experience enables her to provide a high quality of both practice skills, knowledge and critical writing and thinking to her independent assessments.

Susie has significant experience of working with the family courts, undertaking parenting and risk assessments, working with conflict and direct work with children and adults. She is trained in undertaking parenting assessments using the Parent Assess framework and the CUBAS Dynamic Parenting Assessment model. She is also able to complete parenting assessments using other structures such as the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families.

Challenges in the family courts regarding capacity in relation to private law proceedings have increased the demand for non-adversarial ways of addressing issues of parental conflict in parenting. In response to this Susie is an accredited licensed practitioner for the Parenting Apart Programme, which seeks to support separated parents to co-parent effectively.