Ms Samia Michail

Profile

Samia is an experienced pracademic currently teaching and researching in academia, promoting children and young people's voices, children's participation in child protection and their wellbeing. Her research stems from a long career in direct practice, management and advisory roles in non-government, and government where she has provided research, evaluation and consultancy services in the welfare sector. Her latest research is on the potential of systems thinking and Complexity Theory for transforming child safeguarding systems and working with industry partners for a child informed social work.

Research

Publications

Michail, S., Fattore, T., & Grace, R. (2025). Embedding children’s participation in child protection: The burden of decision making and the potential of complexity theory. Children and Youth Services Review, 177, 108456. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108456

Michail, S., Grace, R., Ng, J., & Shier, H. (2024). Cultivating child and youth decision-making: The principles and practices of the ReSPECT approach to professional development. Children & Society, 38(5), 1451-1470. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12812

Michail, S., Baird, K., Fattore, T., & Grace, R. (2023). Operationalising children's participation: Competing understandings of the policy to practice ‘gap’. Children & Society, 37(5), 1576-1595. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12708

Michail, S. (2023). A New Panorama of Child Voice in the Child Protection Context. In S. Richards & S. Coombs (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Research with Children:Reflexivity, Methodology, and Researcher Identity (1st ed., pp. 117-137). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv37wpr3t.13

Expertise