Candies Kotchapaw graduated from the Master of Social Work program from York University in 2016. While at York, Candies' Master research study was focused on pursuing public policy development as a non-traditional practice space for achieving social justice.

Candies presented a pre-curser to her Practice Research Paper, "The Politics of Social Work: Do Racialized Social Workers belong in the Practice Space of Public Policy Development?" at several international and local graduate student conferences including at the Institute for Research on Labour and Employment (IRLE) in Seattle, Washington, The Critical Social Work Symposium at the York University's School of Social Work and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University in Toronto. The pre-cursor paper was published in the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies "Canada Watch Magazine" in 2016.

Candies presented her completed Practice Research Paper, "The Case for Greater Inclusion of Racialized Social Workers in Public Policy Development at the Global Labour Research Centre's Graduate Student Symposium at York University in fall 2016, and received her second publication in the GLRC Graduate Student Conference Proceedings. The link to the online article is: http://glrc.apps01.yorku.ca/publications/conference-proceedings/

Post graduation, Candies continues her professional advocacy work in hopes of broadening the scope of practice in social work. She conducted an independent research study on, "The Black Experience of Precarious Work in Social Services in southern Ontario: An Auto-ethnography and Phenomenological Study of the Characteristics and Consequences of Precarious Work."

This study was presented in London, United Kingdom in summer 2017 at the UCL Institute of the Americas, London Journal of Canadian Studies Colloquium. The article is currently under review for a Special Issue Publication in the London Journal of Canadian Studies celebrating Canada's 150th birthday.

Candies aims to continue her advocacy for the broad expertise of social work, relating to public policy development, through committed engagement with policy actors in local and international arenas.

Most notably, in pursuing this aim, Candies participated in the Young Diplomats Forum program in Riga, Latvia September 3-8, 2017. Here, she was able to interact with Ambassadors and Diplomats from the European Union state as well as contributing a costs/benefits analysis of rebranding the EU through a more inclusive media policy to combat xenophobia.

Candies hopes to pursue her PhD in 2018 to continue her work on the relevance of social work in public policy development spaces.