Dr Edel Tierney

Tusla Child and Family Agency is a National Partner on the PPI Ignite Network. Tusla is represented by Edel Tierney who is a member of Tusla’s National Research Office. The NRO supports PPI in research and endeavours to keep child and youth voices at the core of its work programme through a variety of research initiatives e.g., Child Research Study on Child Protection and Welfare, PPI Approach in Research Ethics Committee (REC) applications and recruitment of PPI contributors to Tusla’s independent REC. Edel’s key research interest lies in finding ways to embed the voice of children and young people in the research activities of Tusla and how this can inform practice and policy. She is interested in the questions of how can research inform and improve our responses to children? How can research make a difference in the day-to-day lives of children and families? And how can the voice of children and families be embedded in this process? PPI is central to this and involves the voices of all stakeholders in the research conducted across the Agency. Edel’s research experience and publications cross the fields of family support and child protection, implementation science, patient and public involvement, participatory research methods and disability and is coupled with a long history of and contribution to voluntary service delivery. She has been involved with PPI Ignite @University of Galway and the PPI Public Advisory Panel for the HRB Primary Care Clinical Trials Network Ireland (CTNI) at NUIG in a voluntary capacity co-facilitating training and meetings for a number of years. She is also a Chartered Member of the Psychological Society of Ireland (C.Psychol.Ps.S.I.)