DrAttracta Lafferty

Dr Attracta Lafferty is a Research Fellow in the UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems and has been Associate Centre Director at the National Centre for the Protection of Older People (NCPOP), UCD since 2009. Attracta commenced her studies at University of Ulster with a Bachelor's degree in Social Psychology, followed by a Master's degree in Applied Psychology, and in 2009, she was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy, also from the University of Ulster. Since then, she has completed the Graduate Diploma in Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin.

Attracta has undertaken several health and well-being research projects involving family carers and vulnerable adults, including older people and people with intellectual disabilities. Before joining UCD, Attracta worked as a Research Fellow on a national ageing research project in the field of intellectual disabilities at Trinity College Dublin and has since worked on several research projects in elder abuse. These have included a study with survivors of elder abuse and three large-scale surveys: Ireland's first national prevalence study of elder abuse, a national study of staff-resident interactions in residential care settings for older people and a national survey of family carers of older people. Her recent research projects have looked at resilience within families where there is a person with intellectual disabilities (NDA funded) and resilience in family caregiving for people with dementia (HRB funded).

In June 2017, Attracta successfully secured an Emerging Investigator Award from the Health Research Board (HRB) to the value of almost €800,000.00 to undertake a four year project to 'Develop a workplace-based programme to promote health and self-care behaviours among working family carers', in collaboration with Family Carers Ireland. This research project is due to commence in October 2018.