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Ms Jeanette Copperman

Jeanette Copperman

Profile summary

Professional biography

Jeanette initially qualified as a community social worker, working mainly in the voluntary sector, this included working at Waterloo Action Centre in London an open door advice agency advising and supporting groups of local residents including the successful Coin Street Campaign. Jeanette went on to work in a local authority and then in East Anglian Regional Health Authority as a manager with responsibility for advising health authorities on service user and carer involvement. Jeanette set up Southwark Women and Mental Health Forum, a coalition of professionals and service users aiming to improve service provision locally and this led to Jeanette’s involvement in pioneering work on sexual assault within psychiatric settings locally and nationally. Jeanette was a founder member of the National Women and Mental Health Network which influenced the development of the first national DH policy on women and mental health – Mainstreaming Gender in 2003.

Since beginning an academic career Jeanette has developed a research profile on service user and carer involvement, mental health, gender issues, violence, food poverty and on interprofessional working. She also has an interest in adoption, attachment theory and its applications. Jeanette has taught and trained in universities on a range of social work and health programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and also developed postqualifying interprofessional training across health and social work.

At the Open University Jeanette is chair of K271 - The Law and Social Work,  a second level social work law module at the Open University on the social work programme.

Jeanette’s past and current profile nationally includes being

Research Advisor to 'Women Listening to Women; Voices of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women'

Social Work Advisor to the DH national Victims of Violence and Abuse Programme Research

 Advisory group member ‘Connecting People’ mental health research project based at The Institute of Psychiatry, London

Family Work Intern, Families and Schools Together, Middlesex University

Member Guardian Newspaper Panel: ‘Social Work The Next Generation’ September 2009

Safeguarding Advisor to London Ambulance Service on the implementation of 'No Secrets'

Accredited Trainer with the Gender Training Initiative in Special Hospitals Department of Health/ University of Kent

Founder member and coordinating group member of the National Women and Mental Health Network, UK.

Lead evaluator, researching user views of Annex, an innovative Eating Disorders Unit based at the Pathfinder Trust Executive Member

Women’s Lead, Social Perspectives Network Social Perspectives Network lead organiser for National Women and Mental Health Study Day and editor of study day papers available at www.spn.org.uk

Research interests

I am writing about the history of community work and radical social work. I am currently researching the history of women's mental health activism and have an interest in the co- production of narratives between activists, service users and professionals. I was awarded a development grant from the OU to scope interest in setting up a publicly facing digital archive which documents feminist activism on women's mental health in the second wave feminist movement. A report from the initial 2014 workshop to scope interest in creating the archive is publicly available. The Women Listening to Women oral history project was developed subsequently and began in 2020.  Funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, its aims were to research, record and celebrate the unique history of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women, a small peer to peer support project on self injury set up by feminist and survivor activists in the 1980s. More information about the research is available at www.womenlisteningtowomen.org.uk and the archive is available at www.bishopsgate.or.uk/archives.

Teaching interests

I am currently  teaching mainly within the social work programme .  I am chair of K271  a second level law and social work module and was on the course production team for a number of social work and other open university modules including for example K313 a third level course on leadership and management within health and social care. I was part of a team that won a teaching award for the inclusion of practitioner and service user and carer podcast material on our third level practice module.

 

My teaching interests include food poverty, mental health, gender and mental health, gender and violence, attachment theory, user and carer involvement, and the history of radical social work.

 

I have a particular interest in  interprofessional training at undergraduate and post qualifying level.

External collaborations

Self Injury Support ( formerly Bristol Crisis Services for Women)

HIstory of Women's LIberation ( HOWL)

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Social Work Research GroupResearch GroupFaculty of Health and Social Care

Publications

[Book Review] Everyday Parenting with Security and Love: Using PACE to Provide Foundations for Attachment by Kim S. Golding (2018-12-01)
Copperman, Jeanette
The British Journal of Social Work, 48(8) (pp. 2403-2405)


Social work education through distance learning: the challenges and opportunities (2018-07)
Vicary, Sarah; Copperman, Jeanette and Higgs, Alison
Social Work Education; The International Journal, 37(6) (pp. 685-690)


Documenting Women's Health Activism in the UK from the 1970s (2017-07)
Copperman, Jeanette
Bulletin of the Social Work History Network, 4(1) (pp. 12-19)


Linking social work agency perspectives on interprofessional education into a school of nursing and midwifery (2007)
Copperman, Jeanette and Newton, Paul D.
Journal of Interprofessional Care, 21(2) (pp. 141-154)


Developing women only and gender sensitive practices in inpatient wards: current issues and challenges (2006-08)
Copperman, Jeanette and Knowles, Karen
Journal of Adult Protection, 8(2) (pp. 15-30)


Being Interprofessional (2009-05)
Hammick, Marilyn; Freeth, Della; Copperman, Jeanette and Goodsman, Danë
ISBN : 9780745643052 | Publisher : Polity Press | Published : Cambridge, UK


‘The soul of the community’: two practitioners reflect on history, place and community in two community-based practices from 1980 to 1995: St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green and Waterloo Action Centre in Waterloo, South London (2020)
Copperman, Jeanette and Malies, Steven
In: Gal, John; Köngeter, Stefan and Vicary, Sarah eds. The Settlement House Movement Revisited A Transnational History
ISBN : 978-1447354239 | Publisher : Bristol University Press | Published : Bristol


Have you heard?...reflections on the Kerr/Haslam Inquiry (2011-04)
Copperman, Jeanette
In: Dunk-West, Priscilla and Hafford-Lechfield, Trish eds. Sexual Identities and Sexuality in Social Work: Research and Reflections from Women in the Field (pp. 89-104)
ISBN : 978-0-7546-7882-3 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Surrey, UK


Women and mental health (2006)
Copperman, Jeanette and Hill, F.
In: Jackson, Catherine and Hill, Kathryn eds. Mental Health Today: A Handbook
ISBN : 978 1 84196 171 2 | Publisher : Pavilion Publishing | Published : Brighton


Food poverty and urban struggles during COVID-19: the social reproduction of unequal London and the false narrative about the ‘pandemic-led crisis’ (2021-01-27)
Lombardozzi, Lorena; Copperman, Jeanette and Auma, Carolyn
OU, Milton Keynes.


How we can help vulnerable EU citizens living in the UK (2019-04)
Ang, Jen and Copperman, Jeanette
Professional Social Work Magazine


'Scoping interest in creating a publicly facing digital archive of women's activism in mental health in the UK': Report of workshop held in 2014 at the OU London. (2014-11)
Carr, Sarah and Copperman, Jeanette
The Open University


Values and Methodologies for Social Research in Mental Health (2006-06)
Tew, Jerry; Gould, Nick; Abankwa, Deian; Barnes, Helen; Beresford, Peter; Carr, Sarah; Copperman, Jeanette; Ramon, Shula; Rose, Diana; Sweeney, Angela and Woodward, Louise
Social Care Institute for Excellence, London.