Alison Tasker

Biography

Alison has been a qualified social worker since 2010 (registered with Social Work England), graduating from University of Reading, and has worked in the wider social care arena since 2005. Her qualified experience is in social work with children, with a particular emphasis on fostering and adoption; having spent a good proportion of her career in the private sector – from social work level through to management.  She has been based at Keele University since 2021, and continues to work as an independent social worker, predominantly in foster carer support, undertaking complaint and standards of care investigations, and as a fostering panel member.

She possesses an MSc in Evidence Based Social Intervention from Oxford University (Green Templeton College - 2011), where the focus was on promoting the welfare of children and families, and completed a systematic review exploring the sexual exploitation of children in systems of care.

She served on the Executive Board of the College of Social Work between 2010 to 2013 and was a Board Member and ultimately Chair at a Stoke on Trent based Rape Crisis charity (Savana) between 2017 and 2025.

Research and scholarship

Alison was a Peer Reviewer at Research on Social Work Practice between 2015 and 2019.

She has the interest in social work research related to children and women. She is part-way through a Professional Doctorate in Social Work, where she is exploring the impact of pregnancy loss, stillbirth and neonatal death on those that then go on to foster or adopt, and implications for assessment and post-placement support. The umbrella review in ongoing and registered with Prospero here.

Teaching

Alison had module led modules on the undergraduate, postgraduate and apprenticeship social work programmes related to:

• Authority, leadership and partnership working in social work
• Research mindedness
• Introduction to professional learning and development

She is an Academic Mentor and a Disability Inclusion Officer within the social work department and the wider School of Medicine.