Ingunn Skjesol
I am an associate professor of social science and Head of the Health and Community Participation Division in the Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences.
Prior to moving to academia I worked as a practitioner, a Social Educatior, in a municipality supporting people with complex needs in their everyday lives. A Social Educator (Vernepleier in Norwegian) is a unique Norwegian profession combining health care and social work. Categorised as a health professional, Social Educators typically work within municipal health and welfare services with a particular orientation to people with disabilities in residential or community settings.
I have been a lecturer in the Social Education program since 2009, completed a masters degree in Disability and Society at NTNU and was awarded a PhD in Social sciences and Social work from NTNU in 2019. In my PhD I explored how integrated family support services are organised and made accessible to families and communities within a particular innovative organisation model - Family Centres.
My research seeks to bridge the divide between practice and academia. I am interested in applied research that supports the development of services, professionals and residents in municipalities across Norway and internationally.
I teach on a range of topics including, interdisciplinary collaboration, service user and public involvement, health-promoting and preventive work for children and young people, low-threshold services, family support services and qualitative methods.
I am also interested in how we make use of digital tools in research,collaboration and co-creation, and provide guidence for students and colleagues on the use of various digital technologies.
My research interests are related to family-supporting low-threshold services, collaboration and innovation in health and welfare services, political guidelines and social inequality, and collective learning processes. I am actively involved in the Mental Health research group in the faculty. In addition, I am an associate member of the Quality of Life and Social Sustainability research group at NTNU. I enjoy collaborating and participate in several exciting research projects:
In the project Together- inclusive parent meetings, I collaborate with Levanger Municipality to strengthen the environment were children develop by involving students and parents in the planning, execution, and follow-up of parent meetings at school.
Young in Namdalen is a collaborative project where, together with the municipalities in the Namdalen region, we explore different perspectives, opportunities and challenges related to being young in a rural area of Norway.
In the SOSFAG project, we explore social work competence and perspectives within health and welfare services using interviews, surveys, and registry data. Meanwhile, in the TURBGOV: Collaborative Strategies for Robust Governance in Turbulent Times project, we develop knowledge about robust governance strategies at the municipality level.
I also participate in two collaborative projects between Nord University, Health Nord-Trøndelag at Namsos Hospital, and the Hospital Pharmacies in Mid-Norway at the Namsos Hospital Pharmacy, KoRiP | Quality and Relevance in Practice - Interdisciplinary practice in Health Professional Education, and DiSaP | Digital collaboration in Practice Studies.
In my doctoral work, I explored collaboration in three Norwegian Family Centers. The centers, inspired by the Swedish Family House model, offered co-located family support services aimed at children, young people, and their families. Here you can find publications from the project: Exploring Family Centres