Associate

Associate

About Vanisha

Vanisha Jassal is the Director of Studies for the MA in Advanced Child Protection at the University of Kent. Vanisha is responsible for teaching child protection professionals from a range of statutory and voluntary community sector organisations, within and outside of the UK. She is also the senior lecturer and senior fellow with the Higher Education Academy.

Vanisha’s specialisms include developing practitioner skills in communicating more effectively with children and has developed a portfolio of teaching programmes in this area. This includes one of the first ever open online course, ‘Communicating Effectively with Vulnerable Children and Young People’.

Vanisha is a PhD researcher exploring child sexual abuse of females from the British South Asian communities, specifically examining the cultural constructs of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’ and how these are likely to be significant barriers to the disclosure and reporting of abuse.

Vanisha skills extend beyond academia and includes her role as a trainee sand play therapist. This form of self-healing focuses on young children who find it difficult to communicate their feelings and emotions in words. Vanisha is developing this practice for use with adult survivors of abuse and it is a form of therapy to which she is deeply committed.

Vanisha holds SFEHA, MSc, BSc, PGDip and PGCHE