MacQueen Bursary: rewarding hard work

Learn how winning a bursary award can progress your career: eight winners explain how it’s helped them to achieve more…

Janet Layland
Health visitor, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust and specialist mental health practitioner for 0 to 19+ Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust

As a health visitor and now as a specialist mental health practitioner for Cheshire East 0 to 19+ team, I have always had a keen interest in maternal and infant mental health.

For many years I have wanted to find the right master’s course to develop my practice.

Following on from attending the iHV PIMH champions training, which acknowledges the importance of HV listening visits, I knew I wanted to complete a MSc in counselling and psychotherapy at Keele University.

The bursary has made a substantial contribution towards my university fees.
 

Receiving the MacQueen bursary will help me to complete my PhD portfolio. Global concept mapping will be used to explore health visitors’ experiences of participating in, and contributing to, the thriving pan-Wales community of practice for the Family Resilience Assessment Tool and Instrument (FRAIT) Wales. 

Brona McSorley
Health visitor and community infant feeding lead, Western Health and Social Care Trust (WHSCT), Co Derry

I work as an infant feeding lead in an area of high economic and social deprivation, with one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Northern Ireland. This award will enable me to purchase modules in preparation for my lactation consultant exam. The knowledge and skills obtained will support me to positively influence cultural change, to increase breastfeeding rates and give children the best start in life.

Caroline Scott
Family nurse supervisor, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust  

The award will allow us to train all the health visitors and the early Years practitioners in Gateshead’s 0 to 19 team to use a tool called Comfort Zone. This training and the use of the Comfort Zone tool would support and promote good attunement and sensitive parenting. Its simplicity means that it can be used with all parents.
 

It was an honour to receive this award. It has given me the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the health visiting profession, by aiming to identify how we as HVs can best support and respond to families where the child has identified special educational needs.

I was privileged to receive the MacQueen award earlier this year, which has given me the opportunity to complete my MSc in primary care. I have nearly completed my integrated literature review on ‘How health visitors perceive restorative supervision’. I hope to take my findings and recommendations for future practice back to the workplace.

Susan James Health visitor,
Trafford Local Care Organisation

The MacQueen award will enable me to complete my master’s dissertation at the University of Bolton. I will be looking at the role of the health visitor in supporting adopted children and their families, an area in which there is currently minimal research.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity this funding will give me to undertake attachment, neurodevelopment and psychopathology training. This will enable me to consolidate and progress with all aspects relating to the Crittenden Dynamic Maturational Model (DMM). The DMM is crucial to understanding attachment and behaviour in health visiting practice.

Here's how to apply