Joanna Nicolas

Joanna is a child protection consultant and trainer. She develops and delivers safeguarding training for her local safeguarding children board (LSCB) and nationally. Joanna has been a social worker for 19 years.

Joanna is an author, a national commentator on safeguarding children for the media and speaks at national conferences. Her first book, “Conducting the Home Visit in Child Protection” was published in 2012. Her second is a practical guide to child protection, and is due to be published in September 2015. Her books focus on the practical issues social workers face.

Joanna undertakes a range of consultancy work, which includes: updating the Department for Education's guidance for professionals, the public and children on the “What to do if... series”; conducts serious case reviews, becoming one of the first accredited lead reviewers in the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) systems approach to serious case reviews and recently reviewed a local authority’s looked-after children strategy.

Much of Joanna's work is focused on how to train professionals, including the judiciary, to work more effectively with child neglect, and how to present evidence and use research. She has recently become Community Care Inform’s neglect consultant.