Richard Hastings is the project director. Richard is Professor and the Cerebra Chair of Family Research in the Centre for Educational Development Appraisal and Research, University of Warwick. He also holds an honorary appointment as a Monash-Warwick Professor at Monash University (Melbourne). Richard is a researcher primarily in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities (including autism). His main research interests are in: mental health, family research, challenging behaviour, forensic issues, special educational needs, intervention/treatment studies, early intervention. Richard also has broader interests in some psycho-educational intervention/treatment approaches including mindfulness, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, and Applied Behaviour Analysis approaches.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cedar/staff/rhastingsprofile

Louise Denne (BCBA) is the joint project manager. Louise is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Educational Development Appraisal and Research, University of Warwick. She is a Consultant Behaviour Analyst with over 15 years’ experience of supporting children and young people with behavioural, developmental and learning difficulties including autism. Prior to that Louise worked in the corporate world as a business analyst and project manager. Her research interests are the dissemination of evidence based practice and behaviour analysis and in particular a competence based approach to service delivery.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cedar/staff/louisedenne

Corinna Grindle (BCBA-D) is the joint project manager. Corinna has more than 20 years’ experience working with children and young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism. Her research interests include early intervention, challenging behaviour, and fostering academic learning for students with moderate and severe disabilities. She is an Associate Professor at Warwick University.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cedar/staff/corinnagrindle/

Peter Baker (BCBA-D) is a member of the project management group. Peter is a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Disability at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent. He worked as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Sussex for over 20 years where he had leadership responsibilities for learning disability psychology services in East Sussex & Brighton & Hove. He lectures at the Tizard Centre on Certificate, Diploma, Graduate and Masters programmes and is widely published in the area of challenging behaviour and intellectual disability including the original Unified Approach and the recent guidelines on managing challenging behaviour in the NHS. He is the joint senior editor of the International Journal of Positive Behaviour Support. Current research activity includes emotional support of staff working with people with intellectual disabilities who present challenging behaviour, evaluation of quality of life and Active Support.

https://www.kent.ac.uk/tizard/staff/acadstaff/peter_baker.html

Nick Gore is a member of the project management group. Nick is a clinical psychologist (HPC registered with chartered membership of the BPS) and lecturer/researcher in the field of learning disabilities based at Tizard Centre, University of Kent. Nick began his behavioural career as an undergraduate psychology student working on the UK Young Autism Project as an ABA tutor, senior tutor and later a consultant. He subsequently gained experience working as an assistant, trainee and clinical psychologist supporting children and adults with learning and developmental disabilities across a range of secure, community and educational contexts. Nick continues to provide behaviourally based clinical support via consultancy arrangements and positions with the NHS and delivers training in behavioural approaches on undergraduate and post-graduate programmes and to organisations nationally and internationally. Nick has particular research interests in the early intervention and use of Positive Behavioural Support amongst children, together with systems and supports to meet the emotional needs of staff and carers more broadly.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/tizard/staff/acadstaff/nick_gore.html

Professor Carl Hughes, BCBA-D, is Professor of Education and Head of School at the School of Education and Human Development, Bangor University, Wales. He is founding Director of the Collaborative Institute for Education Research, Evidence and Impact (CIEREI). The main focus of CIEREI is context-led impact research. More broadly, CIERIE is a collaborative, bilingual, multi-disciplinary institute for the creation of research evidence aimed at positively impacting educational practice, professional learning, educational outcomes, and learning and wellbeing for children in our schools. His research interests include behaviour change in practice settings, evidence-based educational interventions with children, close-to-practice impact research, reading instruction, and developing evidence within educational systems.

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/people/profiles/carl_hughes.php.en

Claire McDowell is a member of the project management group. Claire is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and lecturer in Behaviour Analysis in the School of Psychology at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. Upon completion of her PhD in 2000, Dr McDowell went on to work as Director of Education for Saplings School for Children with Autism, before returning to Ulster University in 2007 to direct the MSc in Applied Behaviour Analysis. For the past 8 years she has taught at pre degree, degree and postgraduate level, as well as supervising nine PhD students ( 4 to completion) and over 40 MSc/MRes research students. Her research has primarily been in the area of: Evidence based education for children at risk of academic failure; Precision teaching and generative instruction; Food selectivity and feeding disorders in young children.

https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/ce.mcdowell.html

Selected publications

O'Neill, S., McDowell, C., & Leslie, J. C. (2020). A Comparison of Variations of Prompt Delay During Instruction on an Expressive Labeling Task. Journal of Behavioural Education, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09407-0 

Skelly, L., Smyth, P., Donnelly, MP., Leslie, J. C., Leader, G., Simpson, E., & McDowell, C. (2020). Factors that potentially influence successful weight loss for adults with intellectual disabilities: a qualitative comparison. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744629520931681

Bohan, C., Smyth, S., & McDowell, C. (Accepted/In press). An evaluation of the caught being good game with an adolescent student population. Journal of Positive behavior Interventions.

Emily Tyler (BCBA) is a member of the project management group. Emily is a lecturer in both the School of Education and the School of Psychology at Bangor University. She completed her PhD in psychology at Bangor University in 2013, during which she researched effective reading interventions for typically developing children and children with an intellectual disability. Emily continues to conduct research in education, including further research evaluating reading interventions, investigating the use of fluency-based procedures to improve academic skills with typically developing children and children with autism, and the effects and challenges of implementation fidelity in school settings.