Returning from maternity leave after the birth of her son in 2018, Professor Julie-Anne Little was mindful of her role in a very practical optometry and vision science programme with significant responsibility for the learning outcomes and professional readiness of its high-calibre students.
Julie-Anne explains, “As many parents will understand, coming back to work from maternity leave is a double-edged sword and can be a tricky transition as you find yourself letting go and taking back at the same time. You know you will miss the sole focus on being a parent, but you also want to reconnect with your career and colleagues.”
Support from the Returning Carer’s Scheme was used to “buy out” some of Julie-Anne's teaching hours on a practical module – enabling her to resume managing the module while pairing up with a colleague who would deliver some of the practical content for an agreed period of time. Working across both teaching and research, Julie-Anne adds, “This was invaluable in helping me to re-engage with both my teaching commitments and with my research. As well as achieving a work-life balance, I was also keen to balance these two equally important parts of my career.
The Returning Carer’s investment helped me to achieve this by carving out time for me to focus on research grants and studies and new lines of research that I am still pursuing today.”
Now, as co-investigator on a £4m Welcome Trust study in spectacle interventions and quality of life – from eye care for learning in Zimbabwe to competency in driving in Vietnam – these areas of research enquiry were in part encouraged by how the Returning Carer’s Scheme made it possible for Julie-Anne to secure research capacity on return from maternity leave.
Returning from maternity leave as Associate Research Director in the runway to REF 2021, creating space to propose and originate studies was important to Julie Anne as she worked on the School’s research environment statement. Now as Research Director, Julie-Anne remains research active, supporting 2 post docs and 4 current PhD researchers. She is also currently leading research in collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Society, exploring early diagnosis of eye degeneration in those with Down’s Syndrome, for whom cognitive decline in later years is more prevalent.
Julie adds, “Coming back to work straight into supporting our REF Unit submission, it was important to me to have the space to focus on this work that was so important to the School, but also to reconnect with being research active myself, whilst not diverting disproportionately from teaching, which is so informed by research.”
Julie also reflects on the role Returning Carers played in helping her to settle back into work after maternity leave, “Part of the challenge of being returning carer is wanting to be fulfilled in your role, to know that you are adding value to the team, to colleagues and to students.
With these different facets to my role, I appreciated how the Scheme made it possible to get back into both optometric education and my research. That was significant in supporting me to re-establish my professional contribution and reconnect with the team and our shared commitment to the impact of vision science.”