Rate My Professor Sarah Whitcombe-Dobbs

Sarah Whitcombe-Dobbs is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in the School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health, at the University of Canterbury, where she also serves as Programme Director for the Child and Family Psychology programme. A registered Child and Family Psychologist, she possesses over 20 years of clinical experience working with children and families experiencing complex developmental and trauma-related difficulties. Whitcombe-Dobbs completed her PhD at the University of Canterbury in 2020, with prior research including a 2011 dissertation on building decoding fluency in children with reading delays and antisocial behaviour. Her career at the University of Canterbury includes contributions to the Child Well-being Research Institute, focusing on child wellbeing research.

Her research specializations lie in developmental psychology, particularly interventions and assessments for families involved in child protection services. Key areas encompass parenting interventions to reduce child abuse and neglect in maltreating families, empirically supported strategies for teaching personal hygiene skills to individuals with intellectual disabilities, assessment of parenting capacity, self-report measures of parental psychosocial functioning in relation to maltreatment recurrence, parenting support for mothers raised in out-of-home care, behavioral treatments for sleep disturbances in trauma survivors, and mental health service responses contributing to suicidality among young people. Whitcombe-Dobbs has authored or co-authored several influential publications, including the systematic review 'What evidence is there that parenting interventions reduce child abuse and neglect among maltreating families? A systematic review' (2019, 39 citations), 'Empirically supported strategies for teaching personal hygiene skills to people with intellectual disabilities' (2021, 18 citations), 'Through a glass darkly: the assessment of parenting capacity in the context of child protection' (2020), 'Parenting Capacity Instrument for child protection' (2024), 'Self-report measures of parental psychosocial functioning did not predict further maltreatment of children involved with child protection services: A small cohort study' (2023), 'First, Do No Harm: How Mental Health Service Responses Contribute to Suicidality Among Young People' (2026), and 'Parenting Support for Mothers Raised in Out-Of-Home Care' (2026). She actively participates in public outreach, addressing topics such as social workers' challenges in protecting children, implications of AI exposure for young children, and communicating with children about global events like coronavirus.