Teresa Smith was a University Lecturer in the Department and also a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford. She was Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work for eight years, 1997-2005.
We were very sorry to learn of Teresa's death in August 2024.Â
Research
Teresa's main research interests were in the fields of community, disadvantage and the family - preschool policy, childcare and education, parental involvement, integrated services, the relationship between formal and informal care, the changing patterns of care provided by family, friends and neighbours, and the socio-spatial mapping of disadvantage and services for families and young children. She contributed to the PMDU 2002 Interdepartmental Review which led to the development of children’s centres and the extended schools agenda, and to the 2005 review of services for children and families by the Social Exclusion Unit, now the Social Exclusion Task Force. She was an expert advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee for Education and Skills for its early years enquiries and in particular the enquiry on Every Child Matters, a Research Associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and a trustee for the Pen Green Research Centre. She was recently working with colleagues in the University’s Department of Education on an evaluation of different ways of supporting parents with their children’s early learning.
