Ongoing Research
MSc and PhD research
MSc research
Louise's Master's dissertation focused on children with acquired brain injuries as they progress through adolescence and into adulthood, relating family function to psychosocial outcomes in this group. Additional modules completed: hypoxic/hypoglycaemic birth injury; childhood ABI and emotional regulation; family function after childhood ABI; prolonged disorders of consciousness; mild TBI and post concussion syndrome.
Family functioning is affected when a child has an acquired brain injury. As a direct result of this research, Hawkley Rehab takes a systemic approach to case management: giving parents and siblings the right support isn’t only the right thing to do, it’s backed by the evidence, and it improves outcomes for everyone in the family.
Articles written from this research:
- Why family functioning matters after a child's brain injury
- What is resilience, and how does it help children recover from brain injury?
- Parenting style after brain injury: what the evidence says
- Emotional reactivity and vulnerability: the resilience factors most closely tied to family functioning
- Looking after yourself as a parent: why your own coping matters too
- Sense of mastery: helping children feel they have a say in their own recovery
PhD research
Louise commenced her PhD at Plymouth Marjon University in October 2022. Her PhD project is focused on children and adolescents with acquired brain injury.
Children with a brain injury can be misunderstood by the people around them, sometimes described as “growing into deficit” as difficulties become more apparent over time. At school, symptoms caused by the injury are sometimes mislabelled because of common misconceptions about brain injury. Louise’s PhD grew out of seeing, in practice, what it means to support both the child and their teachers to understand brain injury properly, and what can go wrong when that understanding isn’t there.
Why It Matters
Why evidence-based practice matters
Case management for people with acquired brain injury involves complex decisions at every stage: about needs, services, and what a meaningful recovery can look like. Those decisions should be grounded in evidence, not habit or assumption.
The evidence base for brain injury case management is still developing. A systematic review by Lannin et al. (2014) found that coordinated, ongoing support across the continuum of care produces positive outcomes, though rigorous trial evidence remains limited. More recently, Leonard, Linden and Holloway (2025) synthesised 35 studies and concluded that case management plays a central role in supporting survivors of acquired brain injury, while calling for better outcome measurement to strengthen the field's research foundations.
Rather than discouraging me, that gap is what drives my research. My doctoral work at Plymouth Marjon University investigates children and adolescents with acquired brain injury. Paediatric brain injury is complex, and its sequelae remain poorly understood by those outside the field. Brain injury survivors need the people working with them to understand what the evidence actually shows. That is a clinical problem and a research problem at the same time.
This is why clinical practice and research belong together. My work as a case manager shapes my research questions; my research keeps my practice sharp. Both are guided by the same principle: what we do for clients should be justified by the best available evidence, applied with professional judgement, and measured against outcomes that matter to the people at the centre.
Membership of BABICM and RCOT reflects a commitment to those standards as an ongoing obligation, not a credential.
References
Lannin, N.A., Laver, K., Henry, K., Turnbull, M., Elder, M., Campisi, J., Schmidt, J. and Schneider, E. (2014) ‘Effects of case management after brain injury: a systematic review’, NeuroRehabilitation, 35(4), pp. 635–641.
Leonard, R., Linden, M.A. and Holloway, M. (2025) ‘Case management for acquired brain injury: a systematic review of the evidence base’, Brain Injury, 39(5), pp. 337–358.
