Jane Reeves is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent. A qualified social worker, Jane completed her MPhil (Kent) and PhD (Open University) analysing young people, in or on the cusp of the care system, who were young parents.

Jane is a former Co-Director of the Centre for Child Protection (CCP) where she worked in partnership with a variety of statutory and third sector agencies and led and co-wrote several immersive simulations. The simulations tackle complex inter-professional issues including sexual abuse (‘Rosie 1’ 2011); neglect (‘Rosie 2’ 2012); radicalisation and extremism (‘Zak’ 2013); paedophilia (‘Elliot’ 2013) and child sexual exploitation (‘Looking out for Lottie’ 2014) and she is currently working with CAFCASS on ‘Rosie goes to court’ (2015) a simulation for professionals and young people on the experience of the court and court processes. The simulations have attracted a variety of awards and are being widely used across the UK by professionals and, in the cases of ‘Zak’ and ‘Lottie’, directly with young people.

Jane is currently working with the Home Office on a second simulation on radicalisation called ‘Behind Closed Doors’.

Jane’s research and publication interests have recently developed to working with psychology to evaluate the simulations developed by the Centre, recently completing a study using eye tracker and emotion reader software to evaluate professional responses to situations in the simulations and evaluating the effectiveness of Zak with teachers as a teaching tool in the classroom. She has also recently completed project Rita, collaborating with the University of Portsmouth and two SME’s to design a new approach to artificially intelligent care.