Professor Rachel Calam BA(Hons), M.Clin.Psychol., PhD, AFBPS

Professor Calam is currently Head of the School of Psychological Sciences.

• British Psychological Society (Associate Fellow and Chartered Psychologist) 
• British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect
• British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy
• International Society for the Prevention fo Child Abuse and Neglect

Rachel Calam's work focusses on links between parenting and child outcomes. Some work has looked at relationships between parental expressed emotion, attributions and behaviour problems in children. Recent studies of media based parenting interventions in collaboration with the University of Queensland, Australia have included the Home Office funded Great Parenting Experiments, which involved over 700 families. These have shown the potential for digital technologies, media and internet-based approaches to contribute to public health level intervention, and have demonstrated the ability of interventions of this kind to overcome barriers to entry associated with face to face parenting interventions.  Doctoral students are working on predictors of access and techniques to improve uptake and enagement with evidence-based parenting interventions in the UK but also low and middle income coutnries.  Work is under way to extend the use of Triple P for parents with a wide range of difficulties, eg., children with illnesses, including asthma and diabetes, and parents with mental health difficulties, eg., bipolar disorder.  We are also trialling Baby Triple P for mothers experiencing postnatal depression.  A NIHR funded study is trialling impact on quality of life ofTriple P for parents of children with asthma. Collaboration on an HTA award is enabling an evidence synthesis of quality of life in children of parents with serious mental illness whch should be a springboard for future studies.

A related area has been a programme of research into further specification of relationships between parenting, child behaviour and the development of asthma symptoms. A major component of this is collaborative research with Professors Adnan Custovic and Ashley Woodcock at the North West Lung Centre, Wythenshawe Hospital. Our collaborative work on their Manchester Asthma and Allergy Study prospective longitudinal birth cohort examines the contribution of psychosocial factors to the development of asthma symptoms. Studies have demonstrated links between biological vulnerability to asthma and the likelihood of parents reporting behaviour problems in their child, with children at low biological risk who have had repeated respiratory symptoms appearing to be particularly vulnerable to behavioural difficulties. We have shown prospectively that behaviour problems are associated with subsequent emergence of wheeze. A collaborative paper with Robert Goodman, Institute of Psychiatry, examined relationships between asthma, health and adjustment in the national dataset. Doctoral students are studying relationshis between family functioning, child adjustment and asthma.

Rachel Calam is part of an interdisciplinary team which developed "In My Shoes", a computer-assisted interview for children. The aim of this is to help children who would otherwise have difficulties in communicating to talk about their experiences, including maltreatment. In My Shoes is now being disseminated nationally by Child and Family Training Services as part of the National Framework for the Assessment of Children. This should give rise to further research to examine interview process issues.

She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) Child Health Research Network, and the Diabetes and Obesity Research Network.

Keywords

• Children in special circumstances (e.g. looked after children, child protection)
• Mental health & psychological wellbeing   
• Asthma, child behaviour and parenting
• Public health models of intervention         

Dr Calam is programme director for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.  She teaches on case formulation,  child maltreatment and prevention science.  She has a particular interest in problem based learning. She has collaborated on resarch on interdisciplinary teaching approaches.

After studying for her PhD developmental psychology, Rachel Calam moved into research on child maltreatment. Following training as a clinical psychologist, she worked at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital at Pendlebury before taking up a post as Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool.  She came to work on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester in 1992, and has been Programme Director since 1994.

She collaborates with Professor Matt Sanders, Universities of Queensland and Manchester on research into parenting interventions, and is lead of the Parenting and Family Research Group at Manchester. www.psy-sci-manchester.ac.uk/pfrg. She collaborates on the Manchester Asthma and Allergy Study, examining the relationships between children's psychological adjustment, family interaction and the development of asthma symptoms. 

A third major area of activity is her work on developing computer-assisted interviewing as a means of helping to give a voice to children. An interview "In My Shoes" that she and colleagues developed in a collaboration between the Unversities of Liverpool and Manchester is now disseminated internationally.

She has served on the British Psychological Society's Committee on Training in Clinical Psychology.

BA Hons, Psychology, Liverpool
M.Clin. Psychol., Liverpool
PhD, Psychology, Liverpool

Collaborators

• Matthew Sanders
  University of Queensland and vistitng professor, University of Manchester
  Professor Adnan Custovic  University of Manchester
  North West Lung Centre Manchester Asthma and Allergy Birth Cohort Study
• Professor Ashley Woodcock  University of Manchester
  North West Lung Centre Manchester Asthma and Allergy Birth Cohort
• Dr Angela Simpson  University of Manchester
  North West Lung Centre Manchester Asthma and Allergy Birth Cohort
• Dr Clare Murray University of Manchester, Respiratory Medicine
• Professor Peter Callery University of Manchester, School of Nursing
• Dr Fiona Ulph  Unviersity of Manchester School of Psychological Sciences
• Dr Anja Wittkowski University of Manchester School of Psychological Sciences
• Dr Penny Bee University of Manchester School of Nursing