Graduate Student, School of Social Work
Thesis Title: Hope among parents of children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders
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Lucy Lach
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About
I am currently a doctoral student at McGill University’s School of Social work. Prior to pursuing graduate school, I worked for five years as an educator at the West Montreal Readaptation Center, where I worked with adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in community and work integration settings. Working alongside social workers in this context inspired me to pursue a clinical social work degree. While in the Masters program, I did field placements with families of children with Developmental Disorders in a variety of community and clinical settings and at multiple stages of the service continuum. These experiences highlighted some of the challenges faced by families, but also the ways in which families are resilient in the face of these challenges. I was especially inspired by mothers and fathers who conveyed hope in a variety of ways and expressed their desire for more hope in “the system”. My doctoral research focus on the experiences of hope of mothers and fathers who parent a child with a Neurodevelopmental Disorder is largely motivated by these parents and by my desire to affect change in the system which provides services to these families and to improve the quality of life and well-being of families of children with disabilities.
I also currently work at the Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF) on a project of parenting children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD). Through my work on this project I became interested in pursuing a PhD in the area of parenting children with NDD, with a focus on where mothers and fathers find hope and what the meaning of hope is to them. I am dedicated to conducting research that is guided by needs arising from current practice and that has implications at both the practice and policy levels. I also aspire to be a social work educator who inspires my students to integrate theory with practice and to affect change from a strengths-based perspective.
