Professor Rachel Calam

Professor of Child and Family Psychology
@ University of Manchester

Professor Rachel Calam
  • Bio

Rachel Calam is Professor of Child and Family Psychology, The University of Manchester, UK. She leads the Parenting and Families Research Group which studies parenting skills training, sometimes alongside other interventions, in different formats to maximise applicability and reach. Work with vulnerable parents includes the large THRIVE trial in Glasgow of early intervention from pregnancy; studies with families with a parent with significant mental health difficulties, with a recent MRC funded online trial for parents with bipolar disorder, and parenting and psychosis. She has a particular interest in testing approaches for very low resource contexts and is working with UNODC on this in different countries. Studies in Panama have investigated parent skills training in low resource communities and a large scale MRC funded study is examining implementation. Her group is addressing parenting and intervention needs of families displaced by the Syrian conflict in conflict settings, displacement and resettlement, using novel, low cost forms of sharing information, for example distributing written material via bread supplies into conflict zones. She is a developer of the In My Shoes computer assisted interview for children. Current research using this approach includes work with a team at Uppsala University, Sweden, who have conducted validation studies.