Staff members with discipline Education, Special
Academia develops at the interface of different fields. This is one reason why the University of Groningen is home to a wide range of fields, each with a great number of subject specialists. The overview below, which is based on a standard categorization of fields, will help you find the right expert for each field. If you cannot find the expert you are looking for in this list, try searching via a related field or faculty; you may find him or her there.

Families experiencing multiple problems

Dealing with challinging child behaviors

- Twice-exceptional
- Special educational needs

Archives of professors, history of psychological and pedagogical testing and testmaterials.


Active Learning and Active Learning Spaces / Classrooms
Soundscape Research
Special Needs Education





* Supervisie masterstage
* Casuïstiek
* Stageterugkomdagen
* Klinische orthopedagogische vaardigheden, oplossingsgericht werken
* Diagnostiek en behandeling
* Orthopedagogische reflecties een brug tussen theorie en Praktijk


More specifically, my research focuses on the resilience, personal and community-based, of LGBTQIA+ youth in the CPS.
Other topics: Child and family welfare; inequalities in child protection; family foster care; residential child and youth care; LGBTQIA+ youth in care; participation of children and families in the child protection system.




In 2014, she completed her PhD at the department of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam (UvA). During her PhD, she developed and evaluated an intervention program (video-feedback training) for professional caregivers in center based child care. During her first postdoc at the UvA, she obtained a subsidy granted by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment to develop and test effectiveness of an intervention program for caregiver training in vocational education. In 2017, Helmerhorst started a second postdoc at the Department of Sociology (Family sociology) Erasmus University Rotterdam within an interdisciplinary research team in which the family is investigated within its wider context, such as the influence of socio-economic status (diversity, intergenerational transmission of inequality, policy (parental leave), and gender ideologies of men and women in modern society. She was the lead investigator of the 3HOEK study (VIDI & ERC Starting Grant by Prof. dr. Renske Keizer), which follows 104 families (fathers, mothers, and 3-year-olds) from Rotterdam. In this project, she studies parenting behavior of both fathers and mothers, parent-child interactions, family functioning, and child development in families from both relatively high as well as relatively low socioeconomic backgrounds.



















University of Groningen Press (ugp.rug.nl)









Asylum and migration
Evaluation research
Trafficking in human beings


- Intensive family interventions
- Effective elements of care for FMCP
- Effectiveness studies
- Taxonomy of interventions for families with multiple and complex problems (TIFMP)



Specific expertise on the following areas:
- Migration (asylum, refugees, unaccompanied minors)
- Youth protection and out-of-home placement
- Disasters (earthquakes Groningen The Netherlands)

