AMANDA FITCHETT

Chair JUSWA Trustees Board

Amanda is an Assistant Professor in Social Work at Coventry University. She is a registered social worker who qualified in 1994 where her practice focused on child protection with disabled children. Amanda moved into academia in 1997 at the University of Leicester where she was initially the Practice Co-ordinator and later, the Course Director. After the closure of the School of Social Work at Leicester she took up the position of the Course Director for CPD provision including the PG Cert Practice Education at Coventry University.

Amanda’s key interest is Practice Education and the promotion of social work education. She is a stage 2 Practice Educator.
Amanda was Vice- chair of JUSWA and has now stepped into the Chair role. Until Feb 2026 she was the co-chair of JUSWA’s Education Committee. Amanda is Deputy Chair of Social Work England’s Education and Training Forum and a member of the Practice Education Development Group. She is also an active member of the West Midlands Teaching Partnership where she chairs the Practice Education group. Amanda is currently a panel member of the West Midlands Regional ASYE Moderation Panel and the former chair of the West Midlands Regional Social Work forum.

Contact: amanda.fitchett@coventry.ac.uk

Patricia Cartney

Deputy Chair JUSWA Trustees Board and Education Committee

Dr Pat Cartney is Head of Social Work at the University of Manchester, where she oversees all the pre- and post – qualifying social work programmes. She is Programme Director for the MA Social Work qualifying programme. Pat has many years of experience as a social work practitioner and over 25 years as an educator of social work students. She is passionate about learning and teaching and holds the award of Principle Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE). Her research focuses on developing inclusive pedagogies for compassionate and effective social work practice. She Co-Chairs the JUSWA Education Committee.

Email: patricia.cartney@manchester.ac.uk

Webpage: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/patricia.cartney

Charles Sutcliffe

Treasurer JUSWA Trustees Board

After spending five years working in industry, Charles was an academic from 1973 to December 2024, including being a professor of finance at the universities of Reading, Southampton and Newcastle. He was a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, and has been treasurer of the Reading University Students Union, Reading Labour Party, Nazir Welfare Trust, Reading Association of University Teachers, and Reading Anti-Berufsverbot. He was the finance spokesman for the Labour Group on Berkshire County Council, and from 2001 to 2007 was a director of USS Ltd. which manages a £77 billion pension scheme. Besides finance publications, he has also published research in the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, Children and Youth Services Review, Social Work and Social Sciences Review, and Seen and Heard.

Email: c.m.s.sutcliffe@gmail.com

Webpage: https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/people/professor-charles-sutcliffe

Kish Bhatti-Sinclair

Chair International and Conference Committees and Secretary JUSWA Trustees Board

Professor of Health and Social Care

University of Chichester, UK

Research Interests: decolonization, anti-racist social work practice, child exploitation, research methodologies, research inclusion, ethics and values.
Kish has a lifelong commitment to combating racism, shaping the debates on black perspectives and de-colonising social work practice. This includes the development of methodologies and theories, such as modern racism, to test attitudes and behaviours. Kish has undertaken studies on child sexual exploitation and hard to reach children using quantitative data and sensitive methods.
Kish has published many journal articles and books. Anti-Racist Practice in Social Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) examines attitudes and behaviours in relation to law, policy and practice. Diversity, Difference and Dilemmas (OUP/McGraw Hill, 2017) promotes the idea that disproportionate attention is paid to immigrants and terrorists in populist policy and media reporting.
Kish has been a principal research investigator for many local authority and NHS commissioned projects and is the research inclusion lead for the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration, South-East England.

Responsibilities:
• Chair of the International Association of Schools of Social Work Committee on Human Rights, Social Justice, and Global Solidarity
• Board member of the International Association of Schools of Social Work
• Chair/Trustee of the Joint Universities Social Work Association International Committee.
• Co-editor-in-Chief of the Wiley Publishing journal: Child Abuse Review.
• Board member of the Association of Child Protection Professionals.
• Chair of the UK Social Work Education Anti-Racist Network.

Email: k.bhatti-sinclair@chi.ac.uk

Webpage: https://www.chi.ac.uk/people/kish-bhatti-sinclair/

Wilson Muleya

Chair Research and Conference Committees and Membership Secretary JUSWA Trustees Board

Wilson is a Professor of Social Work. He holds a PhD (The University of Birmingham, 2002) and is a qualified social worker, registered with Social Work England and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA), recognised for leading transformational initiatives, strengthening external partnerships, and driving educational innovation.

He is currently Head of the School of Health and Social Care at Swansea University, providing strategic and operational leadership to a large multidisciplinary school and overseeing business planning, financial sustainability, and future growth. He spent over two decades at Kingston University, including nearly ten years as Head of Social Work and Social Care, where he led major departmental transformation, expanded academic provision, and enhanced knowledge‑exchange activities, contributing to Kingston’s No.1 ranking in London for Social Work (Guardian 2025).

Sally Paul

Chair Scotland Committee

Sally is the Professional Lead for Social Work, MSW Programme Lead and Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. She is a registered social worker and prior to entering academia spent 10 years in practice, in both statutory and voluntary sectors, most latterly as a palliative care social worker.
Her research is concerned with death, dying, loss and bereavement, with a particular interest in understanding and developing the resilience and role of communities in supporting such experiences. She is a co-founder of Compassionate Schools European Learning Network and Social Work Approaches to Death and Dying (SWADD) Network. She represents her university on the HEI Social Work Leads group which provides a collective voice in debates and discussions about social work education in Scotland.

Email: sally.paul@strath.ac.uk

Webpage: https://www.strath.ac.uk/staff/paulsallyms/

George Palattiyl

Member JUSWA Trustees Board and Conference Committee

Professor George Palattiyil, PhD, holds a Personal Chair of Social Work and Refugee Studies and is the former Head of Social Work at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. His teaching and research interests are in the area of forced migration, refugees and asylum seekers, human rights, individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS, older people and international social work. For his outstanding contribution to teaching and student experience, he won the Edinburgh University Student Association ‘Best Personal Tutor’ Award 2019. Much of his research over the past 15 years have focussed on the social sciences aspects of refugee health, with research undertaken in Scotland, Uganda, Jordan, India and Bangladesh.
His research on the impact of Covid lockdown on the families of care home residents informed Anne’s Law in Scotland. He has published widely in international journals and coedited ‘Social Work in a Global Context – Issues and Challenges (Routledge, 2016), and ‘Practice – Social Work in Action’ special issue on 1) Social Work in India (2012), and 2) Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development (2024). He is a Governing Board Member of Social Work Scotland and has served on the editorial boards of several social work journals. He is a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Email: g.palattiyil@ed.ac.uk

Webpage: https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/george-palattiyil

Davy Hayes

Northern Ireland representative JUSWA Trustees Board

Davy Hayes qualified as a social worker in 1988 and worked as both a practitioner and trainer in Family and Child Care services in North and West Belfast. He joined the staff of Queen’s University Belfast in 2005 and is currently Professor of Child Protection and Safeguarding in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work where he contributes to social work education at both qualifying and post-qualifying levels.
Davy’s research interests are focused on service users experiences of the child protection and criminal justice systems, the involvement of family members in child protection and child welfare processes, and the practice and experiences of professionals who operate the child protection system. He is former Chair of the Northern Ireland Standing Committee of BASW.

Email: d.hayes@qub.ac.uk

Web: https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/admin/workspace/personal/overview/