Research Fellow Full-time NEW

Research Fellow

UCL's Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology undertake world-leading research and teaching in mind, behaviour, and language. It brings together researchers in a range of disciplines such as developmental psychology, clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, health, education, communication, medicine, behaviour and development. The Department is a vibrant environment for both study and research. UCL is the top-ranked university in the UK for research in Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience.

The successful candidate will join a well-established research group, with other postdoctoral researchers, research assistants, and trial managers working on similar projects, all exploring mental health and wellbeing in care-experienced young people. This research is all aimed at improving local and national policy and practice, and the team regularly liaises with the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care. The team also has an established care-experienced advisory group.

The successful candidate will join PI Rachel Hiller's team to work on a large NIHR-funded research project called the MyVoice Project. MyVoice uses a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design to test a comprehensive mental health assessment package for children and teens in the care system. We are interested in whether this improves outcomes for children in care, by changing and improving decision-making within and between services. The project started June 2025 and is in the early stages of recruitment. The successful candidate will be replacing the current postdoctoral researcher who is starting a Wellcome fellowship. A maximum 2-month handover period can be supported, depending on start date.

Children and teens in the care system have far higher rates of mental health difficulties compared to their peers. Many of these young people have experienced abuse and/or neglect, and some continue to experience ongoing instability in the care system, including changes in placements/caregivers. Despite decades of evidence of the scale of challenges experienced by this group across their life, in practice, these young people are less likely to receive access to high quality assessments or evidence-based treatments. We are interested in whether higher-quality assessment procedures can improve access to high-quality mental health care for this group. But we also need to understand whether these types of assessments can be feasibly used in children's social care systems, and any possible risks for the child, caregiver, or services.

This role is eligible for hybrid working with a minimum of 60% on site, which must include Wednesdays (subject to change).

The postdoctoral researcher will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the children's social care based RCT, which will compare a comprehensive mental health assessment to usual-care, with an embedded process evaluation. They will be supported on this project by the PI, a multidisciplinary co-investigator team, and a research assistant and trial manager. They will work closely with a second part-time postdoctoral researcher, who will be based at Newcastle University.

Roles will include: working closely with children's services/local authorities across England, as well as mental health teams; liaising with senior and frontline professionals to support recruitment and data collection; recruitment and consenting of young people and caregivers; conducting thorough assessments with young people and caregivers, including using standardized mental health measures and conducting qualitative interviews and focus groups; collating data and maintaining comprehensive excel spreadsheets to track progress; comprehensive data management as required by a large-scale RCT; liaising with the trial steering committee; contributing to and leading on reports to the funder; the opportunity to lead on outputs, including academic papers, conference presentations, and non-academic outputs; day-to-day support to the research assistant, and working closely with a trial manager.

All children in this study will be struggling with their mental health, so the postholder will require the necessary competence and resilience to work with children who may be vulnerable and may disclose issues that require risk escalation or safeguarding. Any new postholder would receive comprehensive training in these processes, and the research group has established reflective spaces and strong supervision structures to support this work.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

Visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/rewards-and-benefits to find out more.

As London's Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world's talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be under-represented in UCL's workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

Athena Swan Status Statement

Our department holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment and demonstrable impact in advancing gender equality.

You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/