10/03/2010
About CC Inform
Types of information available
- Reference manuals
- Guide To...
- Legal judgements and case law
- Digested legislation
- Research
- Practice
- Multi-disciplinary glossary
- A-Z of Benefits
- Book reviews
Where does our content come from?
Our commissioning, expert checking and updating process
How can I influence the development of the site?
About our Expert Contributors
ABOUT CC INFORM
CC Inform is produced by the world’s largest publisher, Reed Elsevier, which means it can draw on an unprecedented range of social care information.
CC Inform's sources include:
- Elsevier Science, the world’s leading publisher of science and health information,
- LexisNexis Butterworths, publisher of the country’s leading legal reference products,
- Reed Business Information, publisher of Community Care,
- Government departments such as the Department for Children, Families and Schools,
- and hundreds of hand-picked expert practitioners, researchers, academics and policy makers.
TYPES OF INFORMATION AVAILABLE
The information contained within CC Inform is divided by means of the 'tabs' running along the top of the results page. Below is a brief summary of each of our formats.
Reference manuals
In excess of 120 reference manuals will be available, covering all the key areas of practice relevant to professionals working with children, young people and their families.
Each reference manual aims to be an authoritative one-stop shop of highly relevant information, containing:
- an introduction to the subject;
- descriptions of key legislation and guidance;
- an explanation of the role of the social worker;
- discussion of emerging ideas around good practice;
- a service user perspective;
- a host of links to relevant research, publications and reports;
- a comprehensive directory of relevant organisations and service providers;
Written in user-friendly, straightforward language by nationally respected experts in their particular field, Reference Manuals are kept strictly up to date by their authors, and amended as policy changes.
Guide To...
Short, succinct guides to specific and discrete areas of policy, syndromes and issues. Guide To's are written specifically to give non-experts a basic grounding in a particular issue. In excess of 120 Guide To articles will be available covering all aspects of children and families work.
Legal judgements and case law
Short descriptions of every case judgement in the English and Welsh courts which may set precedents or have implications for social care practice with children and families. The most important summaries then have a detailed and expert social care commentary added, aimed specifically at social workers and other child care professionals. These summaries will tell readers A) what the case was, B) what the judgement was, and C) what this might mean for practitioners with similar cases. Kept completely up to date, new cases are added regularly.
Digested legislation
Shortened, simplified versions of the main legislation that affects children and families across England and Wales. Each piece of digested legislation is accompanied by an overview giving practitioners a guide to the most important sections of the Act. The digested legislation will also include links to all the relevant guidance associated with it.
CC Inform’s legislation section is overseen by Ed Mitchell, general editor of Social Care Law Today.
Research
Our Research section currently contains two types of report.
Research Reviews: these are commissioned from academics with particular specialisms. The aim of a Research Review is to give readers an overview of the important research studies in a particular area.
They are designed to give users:
- a summary of the key findings of research;
- what these findings might mean for practice and decision-making
- a sense of perspective about which findings seem to be consistent, and which are contested.
- some ideas about further reading, and...
- a few words of caution about how to use the information.
Government Research: These are short abstracts for relevant government-funded research published since 2003. New pieces will be published as they are produced. In most cases, the full-text of the research is available free via a link to an external website.
Practice
CC Inform offers a searchable database of practice articles from Community Care magazine, including the Risk Factor; Practice Panel, Research Realities and expert features. These articles are written by a wide variety of practitioners, managers, policy specialists, service users and researchers in the social care field. They offer an invaluable source of information and advice for professionals keen to improve and update their practice.
Multi-disciplinary glossary
A glossary containing detailed descriptions of terms, acronyms, common theories, interventions, organisations and forms used across the separate disciplines of health care, social care, education, policing, criminal justice and housing. Also contains explanations of expressions and terms used in the research, legal and policy areas of the site.
A-Z of Benefits
A comprehensive guide to the benefits relevant to children and their families. Regularly updated and user-friendly, subscribers can click through to the benefit they want where they will find a detailed guide on who the benefit is for, who pays it, how to claim and points to watch. Written by Gary Vaux, a leading welfare rights expert, with a live link to Hertfordshire Council’s welfare rights web site.
WHERE DOES OUR CONTENT COME FROM?
Unlike any other online social care library, the vast majority of the content on CC Inform is specially commissioned from expert authors. The editorial team identify authors with appropriate specialisms and commission them to write authoritative, accessible and up-to-date reference material.
Reference Manuals, Guide To's... , and Research Reviews are all individually commissioned from experts in their field.
Our Case Law is produced in partnership with Lexis Nexis. Case judgements are collected by barristers and rewritten - specifically for a non-legal professional audience - by an expert legal team. New cases are added to our database on a regular basis, keeping our case-law library completely up to date. Particularly important cases are given an expert commentary by a social care lawyer, whose job is to draw out the implications for practitioners.
Our Digested Legislation is produced and updated by a team of lawyers headed by Ed Mitchell, editor of the journal Social Care Law Today.
Our Practice content is largely drawn from Community Care magazine's Practice section, including 'Risk Factor', 'Practice Panel' and 'Research Realities'.
Our Benefits Directory is produced and kept up to date by a Welfare Rights expert, Gary Vaux.
Our Glossary is constantly expanding and being added to. We welcome suggestions for new terms.
OUR COMMISSIONING, EXPERT CHECKING AND UPDATING PROCESS
Authors are contacted individually and commissioned to write specific pieces. They are given a deadline and expected to meet it. The editorial team reviews the document and returns it for changes where necessary.
Once submitted, each piece is expert checked to check for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Each piece is also sent for a legal check. Once these checks and balances are completed, the piece is published on the site.
Authors of Reference Manuals and some other types of information have made a commitment to update their piece when there are notable and significant changes in their field. This might include new legislation or guidance being published, a change in a professional's key responsibilities, or a major initiative being launched.
HOW DO I INFLUENCE THE DEVELOPMENT OF CC INFORM?
The editorial team are knowledgeable about social care, but we can't know everything. In fact, CC Inform was built in partnership with a development team of children and families professionals from a variety of disciplines. We continue to value their input, and to act on their advice. We would warmly welcome your comments about the content, suggestions for development and constructive criticism.
Please use the Contact Us form to tell us about:
- topics that you would like to see covered on the site
- inaccuracies, inconsistencies or problems in any of our documents
- gaps in our coverage of a particular area
- ideas for new strands of content you would find useful
- suggestions for new expert contributors
Given resource constraints, we will do our best to respond.
ABOUT OUR EXPERT CONTRIBUTORS
CC Inform has worked with many of the leading experts in the social care field. Scroll down to see the biographies of some of the experts who have contributed to the information on the site.
Ian Angus
Ian Angus is an independent safeguarding children consultant. Having recently worked as the Training and Development Manager for Bedfordshire's Local Safeguarding Children Board, and having worked for 30 years with the Metropolitan Police Service (most recently as Detective Chief Inspector), Ian has a strong investigative background with over 13 years experience in child abuse investigation, management and policy development. Ian has also worked with the London Child Protection Committee on pan-London initiatives such as the London Child Protection Procedures, Inter-agency Training, and safeguarding children from sexually exploitation. Having a key role in implementing 'every child matters' in London, Ian contributed significantly to a number of projects including Violet (preventing belief-related child abuse) and Amethyst (developing a children's Sexual Assault Referral Centre). With a Masters degree in Child Law and Policy, Ian maintains an academic interest in safeguarding children and contributes to national discourse on topical issues.
Dr Jo Aldridge
Jo Aldridge is a lecturer in social policy in the department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. She is also director of the Young Carers Research Group (YCRG), which is known both in the UK and internationally for its pioneering research on young carers. For more information about the YCRG visit: www.ycrg.org.uk
Janice AllisterJanice has worked for 18 years (the past 15 full-time) as a partner in a small practice in Stockport. She is currently serving as Chair of the Primary Child Care Safeguarding Forum. She has been involved since its inception two years ago, and was previously its secretary. Janice has been a GP trainer for the last 9 years. Her particular interests are in mental health and children’s welfare. Her practice received the Quality Practice Award two years ago.
Dr Shazad AminDr Shazad Amin is a Consultant in Adult Psychiatry and Foundation Programme Director based at Trafford General Hospital in Manchester.
He trained in Manchester and undertook his psychiatric training in Nottingham. He has an interest in medical and social work education and runs regular training courses for CAFCASS on a regional and national basis. He is a member of the Greater Manchester Family Justice Expert and Training sub-committees, and acts as an Expert Witness in Family Court Proceedings. He is a passionate believer in multi disciplinary education and training, and in making psychiatric expert evidence more understandable and accessible to the Family Courts and professionals working with children.
Dr Elias AvaramidisDr Elias Avramidis is a Senior Lecturer in Special Educational Needs (SEN) in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. His research mainly focuses on examining the theory and practice of inclusive education and the barriers to its implementation. His research (covering primary, secondary and tertiary settings) has sought to identify effective policies and pedagogies to address the needs of children and adults described as experiencing learning difficulties. He has published on topics such as the theory and practice of inclusion; teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education; the identification of and provision for children with difficulties in literacy; and research methodology issues. He is currently director of a large ESRC-funded research project examining the social impacts of inclusion on pupils with SEN in primary schools. His work has been widely disseminated in a range of national and international fora to inform policy-making and practice.
Simone Baker
Simone Baker was born with impairments resulting from Thalidomide and lives with her ten year old daughter in Reading, Berkshire. She is vice-chair of Disabled Parents Network, a national user-led organisation providing support, information and advice to disabled parents. Her involvement with the organisation began in 1998 following an unsuccessful attempt to obtain support in her parenting role.
She became determined to bring about change for disabled parents. As well as being involved in many voluntary and fee paid roles (including chair of her local Physical Disability and Sensory Needs Partnership Board), Simone has written and contributed to a number of published articles relating to her impairment and experiences as a disabled parent. She regularly makes presentations at national and local events, and is involved with training around the issues affecting disabled parents. Simone has been a user of Direct Payments for four and-a-half years.
Robin BalbernieRobin Balbernie is currently Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in Gloucestershire CAMHS. For two days a week he works with the Children’s Centres in Cheltenham, as lead of the team providing an Infant Mental Health Service, known as ‘Secure Start’. He is also involved in work with the Intensive Baby Care Unit at Gloucester Royal Hospital and has been running supervision groups for Health Visitors for over 20 years. He has a special interest in early interventions, originally arising from his work with adopted children, and is on the committee of the Association of Infant Mental Health (UK) and a member of the Young Minds’ Policy and Strategy Advisory Group. Several years ago he was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship to look at Infant Mental Health projects in America. He has published papers in many journals, including the Infant Mental Health Journal and the Journal of Child Psychotherapy.
Christine BarterChristine Barter is a NSPCC Research Fellow at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. Previously she was a Senior NSPCC Research Fellow with the University of Luton for nine years. Prior to this she undertook a variety of research projects for a number of UK children’s charities. She has published widely on a range of Children's welfare issues including children who run away, protecting young people from racism and racial abuse, boys use of advice and counselling services and institutional child abuse. She has also authored a number of methodological papers on including young people within social research. Her most recent publication explored young people’s experiences of peer violence in residential children’s homes funded by the ESRC under its Violence Research Programme (Barter et al 2004). Currently her work focuses on the neglected area of young people’s experiences of partner exploitation and violence in their intimate relationships. She is also co-editing a book on peer violence between children and young people entitled 'Children Behaving Badly?' for Wiley.
Tim BatemanTim Bateman is a senior policy development officer in Nacro’s youth crime section and a visiting research fellow at the University of Bedfordshire where he co-directs a Professional Doctorate in Youth Justice. Tim is an associate editor of Safer Communities and a member of the editorial boards of Youth justice and Child and Family Law Quarterly. He is secretary of the London Association for Youth Justice and represents Nacro on the Standing Committee for Youth Justice.
Tim has written widely on a broad range of youth justice related issues but has a particular interest in systematic determinants of custody, and the relationship between politics, policy formation and the cultural and attitudinal presumptions of youth justice practice.
Bridget BettsBridget Betts qualified as a social worker in 1980, and she has held a variety of posts in both the statutory and voluntary sectors during the course of her career. Bridget has worked in the field of adoption and fostering for the past 17 years, and her role has included the training and preparation of carers and the preparation of children for permanence and adoption, including the completion of life story work. Bridget brings to this area her own experience as an adopted person. Since April 1999 Bridget has worked as an independent social worker; she currently works on a freelance basis as a trainer and consultant for a number of agencies. Bridget has produced three interactive CDs for use with children, one film and two books and is working on further resources. You can find out more on her website www.bridgetbetts.co.uk
Dr Chris Bools
Dr Chris Bools is a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry who works as a member of an NHS community team based in a family health centre. Over the last 20 years he has maintained an interest in the interface between physical and psychiatric disorders. Early work included research about the identification of psychiatric disorders in children who did not attend school, and later about children and their families in which fabricated or induced illness had occurred. Recent work has focused on multi-disciplinary education and training. He organises the local training scheme in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is married and has two children.
Jake BowersJake Bowers is Britain's only Romani journalist and broadcaster. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Independent, BBC Radio and Television, the Big Issue, Travellers Times and the Ecologist on environmental and minority rights issues. He trained as a staff journalist with the BBC and one of Britain's biggest regional publishers Johnson Publishing.
He combines a journalist’s respect for the truth, with a Gypsies access and insight into his own community to conduct research and cultural awareness training for central and local government, statutory agencies, voluntary groups and the media. He is also the editor of Travellers Times Online and Gypsy, Roma Traveller History Month magazine.
Nick BozicNick Bozic is a chartered educational psychologist who works for Worcestershire Local Authority Children’s Services. He regularly carries out assessment work with children and young people. Nick works within a multidisciplinary team that is co-located with teams of social care professionals. Since 2004 Nick has also worked as an academic and professional tutor on the University of Birmingham’s training course for educational psychologists. On the training course Nick teaches sessions on the theory and use of standardised tests. Other areas of interest include: community psychology and the use of e-learning in higher education.
Celia BrackenridgeCelia is Professor of Sport Sciences (Youth Sport) and Director of the Centre for Youth Sport and Athlete Welfare and at Brunel University, London, UK. After teacher training and degree study at Cambridge and Leeds Universities, she taught physical education in a Hampshire secondary school. She then moved into higher education for 28 years, first at Sheffield Hallam University and then at Gloucestershire University. She ran her own research-based consultancy company for four years before returning to higher education at Brunel in 2005.
Celia is a former captain of the England and Great Britain Women’s Lacrosse teams and world cup coach. She is currently working on research projects with UNICEF and with the English Football Association. Her books include: Spoilsports: Understanding and preventing sexual exploitation in sport (2001, Routledge) and Child Welfare in Football (2007, Routledge).
Dr Bob BroadDr Bob Broad is professor of children and families research and director of the children and families research unit, De Montfort University, Leicester. He is also visiting professor at London South Bank University in the Social Policy and Urban Research Institute (SPUR).
Previously he was director of the National Children’s Bureau’s research and evaluation department. A qualified teacher and social worker, earlier he worked in several inner London boroughs as a teacher and probation officer before becoming a lecturer at the London School of Economics and then head of policy, research and training at Rainer. He has managed, undertaken and published a large number of research studies about children looked after, leaving care, foster care, kinship care and grandparenting. He is currently undertaking, or has recently undertaken, research studies and/or reviews for the Department for Children, Schools and Families (children in transition to adulthood), Save the Children Fund (international kinship care), the Fostering Network, The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT) and the Grandparents Association (publication ‘Being a grandparent: research evidence, key themes and policy recommendations’)
Karen Broadhurst
Dr Karen Broadhurst is a lecturer in Applied Social Science. Having worked as a practitioner in a range of children and families’ social work settings, she now works full-time at Lancaster University in the Department of Applied Social Science, teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate social work students. Karen also supervises a cohort of PhD students and is involved in a number of research projects in local authority and other practice settings. Her research interests are organised around the following four main themes:
1. Child welfare: help-seeking, defining and delivering family support, adoption and fostering, the law relating to children
2. Decision-making in public services
3. The practice/research relationship
4. Philosophy of Social Research
Karen has published articles in a range of national and international journals that include among others: Critical Social Policy, Child and Family Social Work and the British Journal of Sociology of Education. Karen is also book review editor for the journal: Child and Family Social Work. Her work aims to contribute to the international knowledge base that informs policy, legislation and practice in child welfare. She has a particular interest in strengthening the research/evidence base for social welfare practice and the links between academic and practice sites.
Adrienne Burgess
Adrienne Burgess has written widely on fatherhood and on couple relationships. Her book Fatherhood Reclaimed: the making of the modern father (Vermilion, 1997) helped set a new agenda on fatherhood in the UK, and has been published throughout the world. Her publications for the Fatherhood Institute include a number of research summaries including the very substantial The Costs & Benefits of Active Fatherhood: evidence and insights, Fathers and Parenting Interventions – what works?, Toolkit for Father-Inclusive Practice and Invisible Fathers: the working with young fathers resource pack.
Alan BurnellAlan Burnell is a Co-Director and Registered Manager of Family Futures – An Adoption and Adoption Support Agency. He is a Social Worker and an adopted person, a father and step father. He believes passionately that families are the best place for children to grow up in. He has spent the last 20 years working in the field of post adoption and helping with colleagues at Family Futures to develop innovative services that meet the needs of the contemporary adoptive family
Margaret BusseyMargaret Bussey is a senior social worker working in a specialist role with children with life-limiting conditions and their families. She is employed by Hull City Council and works part time within the disabled children’s team and part time in a seconded role in a multi-disciplinary team, IQUOLS (Improving Quality Of Life Services) – managed by Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
She qualified in 1988 and after an initial period in a neighbourhood social work team she moved into the area of children’s disability services in 1990. She worked in the child development team and the children’s disability team before moving to her present specialist role in 2005. She holds a strong belief that social work support can make a positive contribution to the lives of families with disabled children and children with life-limiting conditions. Margaret is married, has four children and is the devoted grandma to five beautiful grandsons.
Jane ButlerJane Butler is a staff tutor with the Open University in the faculty of Health and Social Care. She also works as an independent consultant in the field of foster care, a foster panel chair and as a lay assessor with the General Medical Council.
She qualified as a social worker in 1989, and most of her career has been in social work with children looked after, working in both the statutory and voluntary sectors. From 2002-2007 she was the Director for Wales of the Fostering Network (the leading charity for all those involved in foster care). In 2004, together with Anne Collis, she wrote a report entitled Fit to Foster based on a survey of foster carers and fostering services across Wales.
She has written on the subject of family and friends foster care and long-term foster care, and has helped the Fostering Network develop their policy document Fostering Families: supporting sons and daughters of foster carers.
Martin C CalderMartin C Calder (MA, CQSW) has worked in the field of child protection and child welfare for more than 20 years. He has operated as a specialist child protection social worker, child protection co-ordinator and latterly as operations manager for the Child Protection Unit with Salford City Council, where he also has responsibility for domestic violence services. Martin is moving into independent practice and has founded Calder Training and Consultancy to develop further evidence-based materials for frontline practitioner use.
Martin has written and published extensively around policy and procedural issues in the child protection field as well as the development of accessible, evidence-based assessment tools for frontline workers. His drive is to move beyond policy and procedural requirements to develop practice guidance that can empower rather than deskill busy frontline practitioners from the constituent agencies of the child protection system.
Sarah Campbell
Sarah is a research and policy officer at Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), and is working on a three year partnership project with The Children’s Society to end the immigration detention of children (click here for more information). Before working at BID, Sarah was a policy officer for the Fawcett Society, a campaign for women’s rights, and a social policy researcher at King’s College London.
Brian Cantwell
Brian Cantwell trained in social work, latterly working as a practitioner and manager with the Family Court Welfare Service. Freelance since 1995, he has practised in the field of separation and divorce within CAMHS, Family Mediations - a Children’s Support Service, and as the leader of a multi-disciplinary group of experts, preparing Court assessments in high conflict private law cases.
Brian has worked closely with CAFCASS since the agency’s inception, as a consultant on the practice development and in training. Over the past two years he has published regularly in journals such as Family Law and Representing Children.
Jeanne CarlinJeanne Carlin is a freelance disability consultant. Having qualified as a social worker in 1990, Jeanne worked in children’s services as a social worker in the Humberside area for five years. She then took up the post of team manager in Barnardo’s, managing the disabled children’s team in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. This team provided both the social work service as well as family-based short breaks and sibling support.
In 2001 she left full-time employment to work on a freelance basis. Her main areas of work are research, writing publications and books, doing training and service evaluation. At present she is employed as a freelance consultant by the Council for Disabled Children to work on the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme. She is also a parent of a 25-year-old young woman with multiple impairments who provides much of the inspiration for her work.
Alex ChardAlex Chard is director of YCTCS Ltd, and has worked for the last 17 years as an organisational consultant within children’s services, youth justice and the voluntary sector. He has considerable knowledge and experience gained from working across a broad range of children’s services. He has previously managed youth justice services, fieldwork services for looked-after children, children on the child protection register and children in need.
An area of knowledge and interest is in partnership development, he has been commissioned by a number youth offending team boards to review their role, and he is currently assisting a children’s strategic partnership to review their strategic role. He is an experienced facilitator and also provides bespoke management development programmes and consultancy on team and organisational development.
His recent consultancy work has included assisting both children’s services and youth offending services with preparation for inspection, assisting services with the development of key strategic plans and the development of policies and procedures. He was also commissioned to develop a suite of pan-London protocols covering, YOTs, truancy, exclusion and antisocial behaviour. He is co-author of Defending Young People, a comprehensive guide to the law on young offenders.
He has also developed his practice academically. His MSc in systemic leadership and organisational studies was completed on the impact of inspection on a management team. He is currently studying on the professional doctorate programme at the KCC Foundation, his research and consultancy interest being change and development within the public sector.
Judy Corlyon Her main areas of interest are teenage pregnancy, young parents, relationships between parents and children following divorce and separation, parenting support, and vulnerable children, especially those looked after away from home. In 1996 Judy co-founded the National Teenage Parent Research and Practice Group, a national network for anyone working with and on behalf of teenage parents. She is currently Chair of the Trustees of Docklands Outreach, a charity supporting disadvantaged young people in East London.Judy Corlyon is currently Principal Researcher at the Tavistock Institute, where she returned after three years spent working as a Principal Research Fellow at the Policy Research Bureau. In addition to her previous time at the Tavistock Institute, Judy has worked for many years in universities and children’s organisations as a researcher on family policy.
Andy Cox He has been heavily involved in reviewing and revising the funding mechanisms for Special Educational Needs in both mainstream and special schools in Leicester.Andy is a qualified accountant and has worked for Leicester City Council for nine years. For seven of these he has worked in the Special Education Service as the SEN Finance Manager, and has acted in a temporary capacity as the Education Officer (SEN).
Dr Deborah ChristieDr Deborah Christie is a consultant clinical psychologist, honorary senior lecturer and head of paediatric and adolescent psychology at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since 1998. Her PhD was in neurobiology exploring the effects of early brain damage and recovery of function. She received a Fulbright scholarship and studied at the NorthEastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine teaching functional neuroanatomy and carrying out research on the anatomical substrates for conditioned learning. As a Medical Research Council post doctoral fellow Dr Christie spent three years at Oxford University before joining Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children completing research into long-term learning difficulties associated with treatment for cancer in children
She has published over 80 papers in the field of neuropsychology and her clinical work with young people with diabetes, obesity, cancer, Tourette’s syndrome and eating disorders. She currently works with young people who are searching for ways to live with chronic illness including diabetes, obesity, arthritis, chronic fatigue and chronic pain syndromes. Current research interests include neuropsychological outcomes in children and adolescent survivors of meningitis, quality of life measures in chronic illness and the development of effective multidisciplinary interventions for diabetes and obesity in children and adolescents.
Dr Christie developed the Healthy Eating Lifestyle Programme (HELP) as part of the University College Hospital Weight Management Clinic. HELP has also been incorporated into Watch-It a community based programme in Leeds. In 2001 she was awarded the Association for the Study of Obesity Best Practice award and the Society for Adolescent Medicine Diabetes award in Adolescent Health. She received the award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Clinical Health Psychology in 2004.
Harriet Clarke
Harriet Clarke is a lecturer in social policy and social work at the Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham. Previously, she worked with Richard Olsen on a Department of Health study of disabled parents and their families experiences (Olsen, R. and Clarke, H. (2003) Parenting and Disability: Disabled Parents’ Experiences of Raising Children, Bristol: The Policy Press). She has recently hosted an ESRC funded seminar series on Disabled Parents at the University of Birmingham, and has worked with the Commission for Social Care Inspection on a Special Study looking at policy and practice within local authorities in England.
Lisa CraigLisa Craig works for Triangle providing independent advocacy and support for disabled children and young people. Further roles include research and training. Lisa works as part of a team to facilitate the youngest consultation group, All Join In, an inclusive group of young children that meets monthly to provide consultation and advice to Triangle, and through Triangle to other organisations. Lisa has a health psychology background, and experience working with learning disabled children and young people in different settings.
Dr Heaven CrawleyDr Heaven Crawley is a Director of the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University and a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS).
Heaven has undertaken research on asylum policy and practice in the UK and Europe for nearly 20 years, initially as part of a PhD at the University of Oxford, subsequently as head of asylum and immigration research at the UK Home Office and as Associate Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Heaven has written and published extensively on a wide range of asylum and immigration issues including the impact of asylum policies, the interpretation of gendered experiences in the determination process, the causes of forced migration to Europe, public attitudes towards asylum and immigration issues and the experiences of asylum seeking children who are age disputed.
Heaven is regularly invited to advise governmental, statutory and voluntary organisations on aspects of immigration policy and practice and has twice served as a specialist adviser to Parliamentary committees (Home Office Select Committee and Joint Committee on Human Rights).
Mary DavidsonMary Davidson is a freelance journalist who has also worked for Surrey County Council's children's services for more than 20 years as a social work practitioner, team manager and since 2002 as a senior development manager for adoption and permanency. She is also panel advisor to the county's two adoption panels. Her academic interests include obtaining a Master's Degree from King's College, London University on the likely affects on adoption of the proposals contained in the 2000 Prime Minister's Review of Adoption and as a consultant on a recent study carried out by the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley into enhancing adoptive parenting for a country wide group of adopters experiencing early difficulties in parenting "late" adopted children. She has three grown up children and an ever-increasing band of grandchildren.
Trish DavidsonTrish has worked for CENMAC for seventeen years, initially as an advisory teacher, working with pupils in mainstream and special schools, and then in 2001 she became the Team Leader.
Since working at CENMAC Trish has built up her knowledge of working with pupils with a speech, language and communication difficulty particularly when the pupil is included in the mainstream setting. This has made all the staff working at CENMAC very aware of the needs of both the pupils and staff in secondary schools particularly in London where there is a fast turn over of staff in both Education and Health. In these situations CENMAC provides a constant element in the school support provided.
Staff working in this field are constantly learning. New technology arrives and must be taken on board in order to support pupils. This not only means being able to train the adults and pupil but help them implement new strategies to ensure that the pupil has the correct input and benefits from support.
Liz Davies
Liz Davies is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at London Metropolitan University teaching "Safeguarding Children" and "Communication with Children" modules at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. She also delivers post-qualifying training, in joint investigation and investigative interviewing skills, to social workers and police. In 2007, with the publisher Akamas she published two introductory online child protection training courses and a resource book entitled "Protecting Children". Liz provides consultancy to the media and writes widely on child protection issues, more recently campaigning against the abolition of the child protection register. Whilst a team manager in Islington she exposed extensive abuse within the care system and later as a child protection manager in Harrow developed her specialism in child interview skills and the investigation of organised abuse networks. In 2005 she was the expert witness for Lisa Arthurworrey, social worker to Victoria Climbie, in her successful appeal to the Care Standards Tribunal and continues to support her in her appeal against the GSCC decision to refuse her registration. She contributes to the work of British Association of Social Workers' Children and Families Committee.
Alison DavisAlison Davis has worked in the health service, as a qualified nurse for 25 years. I am a registered general nurse and registered midwife. I am also a qualified health visitor with excess of 12 years experience, working within South East London PCT’s and for a local Sure Start Project. I started working in sexual health about 11 years ago. This began with clinical work and she is registered to prescribe certain medication and issue contraception and treat sexually transmitted infections. In 2003, she expanded on this role and undertook a PSHE certification, which qualified her to teach sex and relationship education.
She works as part of a team, who deliver SRE to all local schools and colleges within Lewisham PCT, as well as youth clubs, leaving care teams, pupil referral units and pupils with English as a second language. She has also contributed to the service's web site, providing information and advice about local sexual health services, www.kisp.org.uk
Thangam DebbonaireThangam Debbonaire works with statutory, voluntary and governmental agencies across the UK and internationally on intimate partner violence and other forms of violence against women. She designs and delivers training courses, carries out research and evaluation, creates resources and provides other services to improve public and professional recognition of and responses to violence against women and prevention work including programmes in schools and youth work. This includes the Safer Bristol resource “Spiralling” jointly created with Kevin Walton, National Youth Theatre and yeastproductions film company, including an original film about domestic violence in a teenage relationship and an interactive CD Rom of resources, worksheets and activities for use with children and young people of all ages. From 1991 to 1998 Thangam was National Children’s Officer for Women’s Aid England. She has an M.Sc from Bristol University in management, development and social responsibility. She currently works part time as Research Manager for Respect, with responsibility managing for the multi site research into the outcomes of participation in domestic violence perpetrator programmes and is also a facilitator with a perpetrator programme.
Delight Training
Delight Training Services have been providing training and consultancy for fifteen years. We work in the criminal justice arena in both secure and community settings, with social services, with the health service particularly around forensic mental health, and with a variety of other voluntary and statutory sector organisations where our services are of value. These services fall into two core categories; first of all, structured cognitive intervention programmes, particularly those focused on offending behaviour and in particular, substance abuse, and alcohol-related violence; and secondly, core practitioner skills which focus on enhancing more effective practice within a variety of existing methods of work.
Savita DeSousaSavita has worked for the British Association for Adoption and Fostering for four years. She has a national remit and responsibility for policy and development issues relating to private fostering and black minority ethnic children, who are unable to live with their birth families. Previously she has worked for local authorities and the voluntary sector. She has worked as a social worker, staff development officer and manager. She has experience of working in social services, corporate services and multi-disciplinary teams.
Kamena DorlingKamena Dorling is Legal and Policy Officer, and runs the Refugee and Asylum Seeking Children’s Project for the Children's Legal Centre, which assists non-legal specialists and front-line professionals in ensuring that the children with whom they are dealing obtain the services and assistance to which they are legally entitled. In addition to providing detailed advice on the impact of immigration law on services to children, the project has campaigned to ensure that laws and policies defend asylum seeking children’s rights and to extend the protections available to them.
Kamena worked closely with refugees for several years at the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, and then moved to the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre in Delhi. There she prepared reports and produced thematic reports, and guides to civil and political rights for use by human rights activists in India, before returning to England and working at Human Rights Watch in their Advocacy department. She has an LLM in International Human Rights Law.
Hazel DouglasHazel Douglas started her professional career as a clinical psychologist working with adults. She was always interested in early intervention and this led her to train as a child psychotherapist to work with children. She has now gone full circle with the Solihull Approach team and is developing antenatal and postnatal resources for adults as parents!
Andrew Durham
Andrew Durham has been a qualified social worker since 1983; he has the Advanced Award in Social Work (AASW), and a Ph.D in Applied Social Studies, from the University of Warwick, which researched into the impact of child sexual abuse.
He has over twenty years experience of providing therapeutic services to children and young people. He has specialised in the field of post-abuse counselling and interventions for children and young people with sexual behaviour difficulties for the past 15 years.
Andrew Durham is currently the Consultant Pracitioner for the Sexualised Inappropriate Behaviours Science (SIBS), a countrywide Children Young and Families Services resource, within Warwick County Council. He has managed this service for the past 12 years, this work has involved: providing specialist therapuetic work for children and young people; training and consultation for social workers, psychologists and related professionals; field research, policy development and writing practice protocols. He also works in this field as an independent child care consultant, again undertaking therapeutic work with children and young people, consultancy, lecturing and training.
Andrew Durham is a visiting lecturer at the University of Warwick, and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Qualitiative Social Work. He is author of the books Young Men Surviving Child Sexual Abuse - Research Stories and Lessons for Therapeutic Practice (2003) and Young Men Who have Sexually Abused - A Case Study Guide (2006), both published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd. He has also published academic papers and other chapters. He has been "checked" and approved by The Law Society as an expert witness, and has been an advisor to the BBC.
Judith EdwardsJudith Edwards (PhD) is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist teaching and supervising on various courses at the Tavistock Clinic, where she is also course tutor for the MA in Psychoanalytic Studies for non-clinical students. Apart from publishing papers in academic journals internationally, she has contributed to many books including most recently The Emotional Experience of Adoption (Hindle and Shulman, Routledge, 2008) and (Acquainted with the Night: Psychoanalysis and the Poetic Imagination (Canham and Satyamurti, Karnac, 2003). She also conceived and edited Being Alive (Routledge, 2001) on the work of Anne Alvarez. She was joint editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy from 1996 to 2000, and has edited numerous books on psychoanalytic subjects, including Live Company ( Alvarez 1992, Routledge), Arctic Spring: Potential for Growth in Adults with Psychosis and Autism (Tremelloni 2005, Karnac) ,Psychotherapy with Young People in Care: Lost and Found (Hunter 2001, Brunner-Routledge) , and Intellectual Disability, Trauma and Psychotherapy (Edited Cottis, 2009, Routledge).
Helen Elliott
Helen Elliott qualified as a Social Worker in 1982 and has extensive experience both as a practitioner and a manager in local authority children and families services and The Probation Service where she managed Probation teams working with sexual and violent offenders.
Helen has a particular interest in multi-agency work and prior to her current post was responsible for implementing and co-ordinating Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) in the London Probation Area, working closely with Police and other partner agencies. This included input to a Home Office Multi-Agency Group that produced the National MAPPA Manual of Guidance. She also contributed to the work of the Project Team in developing a national database of sexual and violent offenders (ViSOR).
Helen is now working for the London Borough of Barnet where she is Development Manager for the Safeguarding Children Board , a multi-agency strategic group that is responsible for ensuring that agencies work together effectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people .
Julia FeastJulia Feast is the policy, research and development consultant, British Association for Adoption and Fostering. In the past she managed the post-adoption and care counselling research project, The Children’s Society, worked as a local authority social worker and team manager, and also as a children’s guardian and reporting officer. She has published many articles on the subject of adoption search and reunion. She has also written about the rights to information for former care adults and children conceived as a result of donor-assisted conception. In 2000, in collaboration with Professor David Howe and her colleagues at the Children Society, she published a large-scale study entitled Adoption Search and Reunion - the Long-Term Experience of Adopted Adults, which was republished by BAAF in 2003. In collaboration with Dr John Triseliotis and Dr Fiona Kyle, she reported the findings from a further study entitled Adoption Triangle Revisited, (BAAF 2005), exploring adoptive and birth parents’ experience of adoption search and reunion.
Donald ForresterDonald Forrester was a child care social worker and senior practitioner in an inner London authority from 1992 to 1999. Since 1999 Donald has been a lecturer and researcher. He has been involved in studies on care planning, on initial social work assessments, on social work with parental substance misuse and on training child and family social workers motivational interviewing.
He is author of a number of recent articles in the area of parental substance misuse and is co-author of a forthcoming book Parents Who Misuse Drugs or Alcohol: Effective Interventions in Social Work and Child Protection. Donald is particularly interested in the relationship between research and practice. He is currently working with the Welsh Assembly Government on building better links between evidence and practice. He is also the co-ordinator for the United Kingdom Social Work Research Strategy.
Anita Franklin
Dr Anita Franklin has over 15 years experience of undertaking research with vulnerable groups of children and young people. Currently she is a Senior Researcher at The Children’s Society where she manages a number of research projects concerning disabled children and young people. Previously Anita was a Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York where she authored a number of publications concerning the participation of disabled children and young people in decision-making.
Fiona GardnerFiona Gardner trained as a social worker and as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She has worked in a generic social services team, in child and family guidance, the NHS in a clinic for young people, and in the voluntary sector as well as running a private practice. She is currently employed as child protection adviser for the Church of England in the Diocese of Bath and Wells, and as supervisor for the Professional Masters Programme in Counselling and Psychotherapy at
She has published in leading national and international journals on gender, child sexual abuse and psychotherapy training, and has contributed to several edited books. She is the author of Self-Harm, a psychotherapeutic approach (Brunner-Routledge 2001), Journeying Home (Darton, Longman and Todd) 2004, The Four Circles of Love (Darton, Longman and Todd 2007), and is working on a co-edited book Researching, Reflecting and Writing about Work (Routledge)
Loraine GelsthorpeDr Loraine Gelsthorpe is Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. Early on in her career Loraine had experience of working in psychiatric hospitals and then in residential care – with troubled children and young people. Study at Sussex University and then Cambridge led to an academic career, but one which has taken her in and out of police stations, courts, and prisons. Current research and teaching revolves around youth justice, restorative justice, race and gender issues in criminal justice, community penalties, and resettlement issues for women.
Recent publications include: Provision for Women Offenders in the Community (with Gilly Sharpe and Jenny Roberts, and published by the Fawcett Society) and the Handbook of Probation (edited with Rod Morgan, and published by Willan Publishing). She has recently completed research on ‘music in prisons’ also (for the Irene Taylor Music Trust). Loraine is a UKCP registered psychoanalytical psychotherapist in her spare time.
Perdeep Gill
Perdeep Gill is presently an independent social care trainer and consultant, providing training to statutory and voluntary sectors. She also provides specialist advice on safeguarding cases involving minority ethnic communities.
She graduated with a social work qualification in 1990 and has held both practitioner and managerial posts as well having been a child protection advisor. She specialised in child sex abuse while at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She has written on child sex abuse and given evidence to the United Nations on modern slavery. She has undertaken research and consultation work with faith and diverse communities with regard to safeguarding. She has also written child protection manuals in relation to issues of forced marriages and race and equality.
Perdeep is a child protection advisor to a number of regional and national BME voluntary and faith groups.
Danya Glaser
Danya Glaser is honorary consultant child & adolescent psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, London. Previously a developmental paediatrician, she has also worked in Child Psychiatry in the community. Previosuly, she headed an integrated child protection service working respectively with the identification and treatment of emotional abuse; providing multidisciplinary assessments for Children Act proceedings and a post protection team working with children who have been seriously maltreated and their current, often new carers. Dr Glaser has taught and written widely on various aspects of child maltreatment, including sexual and emotional abuse, fabricated or induced illness; and the effects of child maltreatment on the developing brain. With her research team she is currently completing a follow up study of children who have been subject to care proceedings and has recently co-authored a book on the evidence base on attachment and attachment disorders. Dr Glaser is immediate past president of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN), immediate past member of the Family Justice Council and Visiting Professor at UCL and the Anna Freud Centre. She is chair of Coram adoption panel.
Lisa Gordon ClarkLisa Gordon Clark is a qualified play therapist and co-ordinator of communications and public relations for the British Association of Play Therapists (www.bapt.info). Following a degree in psychology she initially trained as a primary school teacher and taught for six years, latterly in special educational needs, before suspending her career for motherhood.
Two wonderful daughters later, Lisa trained further in dramatherapy and then play therapy at Roehampton,
Much of her practice is on a freelance basis in the West London area (as PlayFully), but since 2005 she has also been based part time at a child and family centre in the London Borough of Hounslow. She is a BAPT- registered clinical supervisor and has also done some training in filial therapy.
She was on the board of directors of BAPT from 1998-2006 and recently co-led an introductory play therapy training course in Mumbai, India.
Malcolm Green
Malcolm has worked for 18 as the Senior Education Welfare officer for Blaenau Gwent. Over the past 24 years Malcolm has also served Gwent as a magistrate. He spent 20 years on the family panel, being the chairman for 9 years and as deputy chairman before this. Malcolm has served on several court committees including the Gwent Advisory panel for the selection of new magistrates.
Dr Karen GuldbergKaren Guldberg (BA; PGCE; PGCert; MA; M.Ed; PhD) is a Lecturer in Autism Studies, School of Education, University of Birmingham. Karen taught children with autism for many years and now delivers training programmes for practitioners. Her research focuses on educational intervention for children with autism and the training needs of practitioners. She is particularly interested in how technology enhanced learning environments can enable learning.
Anna GuptaAnna is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and the Head of Department in the Department of Health and Social Care at Royal Holloway, University of London. Anna's professional background is in social work with children and families. She worked as a child protection social worker and team manager in two London Boroughs and has also extensive experience working as a Children's Guardian and independent social worker in the family courts. For the past 9 years she has run the successful post-qualifying programmes for child care social workers at Royal Holloway and has recently been appointed as Head of Department. Her current research interests are inter-professional work, decision-making in the family courts and with children looked after, and the development of critically reflective social work practice with children and families.
Gill Hague
Professor Gill Hague is the Co-Director of the Violence Against Women Research Group at the University of Bristol. This group has a strong reputation for gender violence research and is very well-known in the field nationally and internationally, working in an activist frame whenever possible.
Gill has been working on domestic violence for 35 years as an activist, social worker, manager, researcher and scholar. She has conducted a large number of research projects on the issue in many countries including India, South Africa, Canada, Kurdistan and Uganda.
Her research crosses the domestic violence field. For example, she recently led a large collaborative study on how to involve domestic violence survivors in service development, and directed the first-ever national UK study of disabled women and domestic violence. She has produced over 90 publications on violence against women including the popular overview book with Ellen Malos, Domestic Violence: Action for Change.
Elizabeth HarlowElizabeth Harlow qualified as a social worker in 1981 and was awarded a PhD in social sciences in 1998. She is currently employed by the University of Salford as a senior research fellow. Her overarching research interest is in human relations and this has been purused in relation to: gender and sexuality; child welfare; the organisation and management of social work; and the changing construction of the social work profession. With particular expertise in qualitative and case study methodologies, she has evaluated the provision of community and safeguarding services to children and their families, as well as conducted exploratory research on the incidence of teenage pregnancy. Theoretical and empirically based papers have been published in the leading social work journals. In addition to having edited the journal Social Work and Social Sciences Review she has co-edited two books. She is currently editing a collection of papers on the future of foster care in the United Kingdom which is due to be published by Whiting and Birch in 2008. This academic activity is informed by previous experience as a social work practitioner, manager and educator.
Lynne HarneDr Lynne Harne has been working around violence against women and children for the last 25 years. She has undertaken research on the impact of domestic violence from violent fathers, including looking at these fathers’ perspectives and parenting practices.
She is currently concerned with risk assessment in this context at the University of Bristol. She also undertakes education and training on domestic violence and family policy, and her recent publications include (with J Radford) Tackling Domestic Violence: Theories, Policy and Practice (Open University Press, 2008), which is aimed at professionals.
Gordon Harold
Professor Gordon Harold is the Alexander McMillan Chair in Childhood Studies, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His primary research interests focus on the effects of family stress on children's emotional, behavioural and academic development. He has conducted several large-scale, longitudinal studies looking at the effects of inter-parental conflict on children. He is presently involved in several projects aimed at highlighting the underlying psychological mechanisms that explain differences in children's adaptation to hostile inter-parental relations and how evidence-based intervention programmes may be developed to improve outcomes for children most at risk from “seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another”.
Dr Di Hart
Di Hart worked for many years as a childcare social worker and manager before taking up a practice development post at the National Children’s Bureau. She has a particular interest in children in secure settings. Recent work has included the development of a care-planning model for looked after children who go into custody and a review of the use of physical restraint in secure children’s homes. Di also continues to be committed to supporting practitioners within children’s social care services working in safeguarding or looked after services. She has undertaken a project aiming to improve outcomes for the children of drug-misusing parents and is co-author of Adult Problems, Children’s Needs: Assessing the Impact of Parental Drug Use – a Toolkit for Practitioners and Putting Corporate Parenting into Practice.
Gill Haworth Gill Haworth is director of Intercountry Adoption Centre (IAC). She has specialised in the field of intercountry adoption since 1992 when she became director of Overseas Adoption Helpline, IAC’s predecessor. Gill is a qualified social worker and has worked continuously in child care, in either the statutory or voluntary sector, since 1971. She was an adoption practitioner and then team manager of fostering and adoption services in a local authority setting for several years. She has experience as chair and vice chair of agency adoption panels. Gill is currently chair of the Adoption Agencies’ Consultants Group on Intercountry Adoption and is vice chair of the Network for Intercountry Adoption in the UK.
Jane HeldJane Held has 28 years of experience in social care. For 15 years she worked directly with looked-after children in a variety of settings, managing a range of children’s residential foster and adoption services. She subsequently held a number of senior management posts most recently as director of social services in the London Borough of Camden. She was also the co-chair of the Association of Directors of Social Services Children and Families Committee from 2001 to 2003. Jane is now running her own consultancy. A children’s services specialist, she is working on a range of projects relating to Every Child Matters for the Department for Children, Schools and Families as well as the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Improvement and Development Agency and the Local Government Association. She is the lead consultant on the DCSF placement stability programme after undertaking research for them on placement stability in 2005.
Pauline HeslopDr Pauline Heslop has a background of working with children and young people in a variety of settings in the
She has an international reputation for her research work about the transition of young people with learning disabilities towards adulthood. The report called ‘Bridging the Divide at Transition’ contributed thinking towards the development of the learning disability White Paper Valuing People in 2001 and has been widely quoted in government documents. Her most recent project, ‘Help to Move On’, focuses on the experiences of young people with learning disabilities who are placed in out-of-area residential schools and colleges at transition.
Andrew Hill
Andrew Hill is a lecturer in social work at the University of York. Before taking up his current post he worked as a social worker for twenty years, starting as a member of a "generic" local authority social work team, but soon specializing in work with children and families. His interests and experience include family support, child protection, therapeutic work with children, gender and social work with children and families, and also adoption and fostering. Most recently Andrew worked in the voluntary sector, undertaking therapeutic work with children who had been maltreated, often sexually abused. A growing awareness of the impact of such abuse on all the members of the family led to an interest in trying to understand how professionals might be able to help. His PhD research was into the complex relationships between professional therapists and safe carers in helping their sexually abused children.
Tracy HindTracy Hind is a youth and community development consultant with 20 years' experience of working in the statutory and voluntary sector. Trained as a youth worker, she has developed and managed numerous young lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) young people's services. She was the LGB Youth Project Officer for London Youth, a large charity working to support young people, and the Youth Project Officer for GALOP, a national LGB charity working to support victims of homophobic violence. She is now a Trustee of Allsorts LGBT Youth Project in Brighton. Tracy now works freelance and is an Associate Consultant and Trainer for UK Youth, and is an Associate Consultant for WSA Community Consultants. She is also an Associate Tutor at Sussex University where she teaches on the Foundation Degree in Community Development. Tracy's main interests are in developing work that challenges exclusion and promotes equality, with a particular focus on gender, sexual orientation and race, and she is currently also an Equalities Trainer for Brighton and Hove City Council.
Pauline HogganPauline obtained a CQSW in 1973 from Edinburgh University and a Diploma in Advanced Social Work Studies with distinction form Dundee University in 1993.Most of Pauline’s career in social work has been focused on children and families work, although she started as a trainee and then a main grade social worker in generic urban area teams in Edinburgh. Pauline spent a number of years managing permanence planning and family finding, and then in the child care planning section, of Lothian Region. Pauline became Head of Service in Argyll and Bute Council at the time of local government reform.
After several years as Director of a small voluntary adoption agency in London, Pauline returned to Scotland to work on a freelance basis. Since then she has worked mainly for local authorities and voluntary agencies. This has included policy and procedures development, case reviews, evaluations, independent consultations and inter-agency Child Protection and Integrated Assessment Training. Pauline also worked as a tutor on the Open University Diploma in Social Work course.
Pauline is the Chair of the Inverclyde Council Adoption, Fostering and Permanence Panel, and of the Action for Children Scottish Fostering Panel.
Pauline is involved, as a volunteer, with a UK charity, the Children and Families International Foundation, whose focus is to develop and support Malawian family and kinship based care for orphaned children. As part of this, Pauline has carried out workshops and tutorials with students on the first Malawi qualifying social work course in 2007. She is an associate of the Scottish/Malawi Partnership.
Joy Howard
Joy Howard was the originator of Support Care, and initiated and developed the service in Bradford from 1996-2005. During this time she also worked closely with the Fostering Network to disseminate the ideas, help develop good practice and ensure links between developing schemes were maintained across the UK.
Sandra HutchinsonSandra Hutchinson is editor of The Good Schools Guide - Special Educational Needs, an established writer and editor of The Good Schools Guide and agony aunt and regular contributor to First 11 magazine. She has undertaken numerous roles in education, including: head of maths, assistant head, and AFF worldwide education specialist, where she advised individuals and policy makers on all aspects of education.
She has worked as a volunteer with children in care, adults with learning difficulties and hearing-impaired young people. Her interest in special educational needs developed, when as a newly-qualified teacher, a colleague advised her to 'knit' with disaffected teenagers rather than attempt to teach them. Alarmed, she enlisted on one of the first post Warnock Report courses aimed at teaching children with learning disabilities in mainstream schools and subsequently worked on one of the ground-breaking enhancing achievement projects.
Sonia JacksonSonia Jackson OBE AcSS FRSA is Professor of Social Care and Education at the University of London Institute of Education. She is a qualified clinical psychologist and social worker and was Head of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies at the University of Wales Swansea before moving to direct research projects at the Thomas Coram Research Unit. She has served as a Trustee, and now Patron of the Who Cares?Trust and as Chair of Children in Wales. She has published many books, chapters and research reports on all aspects of public care, but particularly on the interface between care and education.. She first drew attention to the neglected education of children in care in the early 1980s and carried out the only UK study of university students who have been in care, Her current project is a five nation study of educational pathways of young people with a public care background, funded by the European Union.
Glenys JonesDr. Glenys Jones (MA; MEd; PhD) is a Chartered Psychologist and a Lecturer and Researcher in the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) at the University of Birmingham. She has been engaged in research into educational provision and interventions in the field of autism for over 25 years and is Editor of the Good Autism Practice Journal, published by BILD. She led the research to inform the work of the Autism Education Trust (Jones et al., 2008) and has recently been involved in creating the new web and DVD resource on the autism spectrum for all mainstream primary and secondary schools, produced by the DCSF.
Rita JordanRita has a BSc: Psychology, an MSc: Child Development, an MA: Linguistics and a PhD. In the 1960s she established services for children then excluded from education, She is a qualified teacher and was Deputy Principal of a school for children with ASD. From 1993, she developed a range of professional development programmes in autism studies at The University of Birmingham, including a web-based one. She established two journals in Autism (one of which she co-edited for 11 years) and served on the board of two others. She has written about and researched many aspects of ASD and has been involved in training events, consultations and conferences nationally and internationally. She has served on many task forces and working parties to review evidence and offer advice in relation to ASD. In 2007 she received an OBE for her services to special needs education.
Gill Joyce Gill’s professional background prior to joining the CPSU spanned more than 20 years in the health service. After qualifying at the Hospitals for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street she later moved into a career in health visiting, developing a specialist focus and expertise in child protection which included the development and delivery of Area Child Protection Committee multi-agency child protection training. She was awarded a masters with distinction in Child Welfare and Protection in 2005. Gill has a passion for sport as a participant, a volunteer and as a parent of children involved in sports at varying competitive levels. Gill Joyce is a Senior Consultant with the NSPCC and joined the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU) in June 2004 as a National Development Officer. The NSPCC is the UK’s leading charity specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children. In 2001, the NSPCC in collaboration with Sport England established the CPSU, a unique and highly influential initiative to protect all children in sport from abuse. The CPSU was set up to translate into action ambitious plans to raise safeguarding awareness, standards, knowledge and skills throughout sport. The CPSU provides a comprehensive support service to stakeholders in sport on all matters relating to safeguarding and the protection of children.
Ann Lewis
Ann Lewis leads a unique research group of around 30 academics, at the University of Birmingham, focusing on disability, educational inclusion and special needs. She is a member of the Lamb Inquiry and specialist advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on SEN.
She has a long-standing research interest in exploring with children their views, particularly those of children with disabilities or special needs. This is reflected in her many publications including My school, my family, my life: Telling it like it is. A study drawing on the experiences of disabled children, young people and their families in Great Britain in 2006 (with Sarah Parsons and Christopher Robertson, DRC 2007) Researching Children’s Perspectives (with Geoff Lindsay, Open University Press 2000) and Children’s Understanding of Disability (Routledge 1995).
Her current work is examining the particularly tricky issues in exploring the ideas of children with autism concerning self and spirituality.
Jo Lipscombe
Dr Jo Lipscombe is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, where she has been involved in research, dissemination and teaching activities since 1998, contributing to both the BSc Childhood Studies and the MSc Social Work. Until 2007 she was a Senior Consultant with a national crime reduction charity, working closely with the Youth Justice Board. Her role there included the development and dissemination of policies and practice initiatives for children at risk of becoming involved with anti-social or offending behaviour. Jo’s doctoral thesis explored young people's experiences of remand foster care, and was partly funded by the Home Office. Current research interests include the interface between the criminal justice and care systems, the criminalisation of children and childhood, and the ethical participation of children in research. Jo has published articles in a range of national and international journals, including the British Journal of Social Work, Child and Family Social Work, and Youth Justice. She is author of Care or Control? Foster care for young people on remand (BAAF, 2006) and Fostering Adolescents (with Elaine Farmer and Sue Moyers, Jessica Kingsley, 2004).
Irena Lyczkowska
Irena Lyczkowska is a senior social worker in the Post Adoption and Post Care Team at the Catholic Children's Society (Arundel and Brighton, Portsmouth and Southwark).
Dr James MacCabeDr MacCabe is honorary consultant psychiatrist at the National Psychosis Service, south London and the Maudsley NHS Trust.
This is a service for patients from anywhere in the UK who suffer from psychotic disorders but have not responded well to standard treatment. He also conducts population research into the causes of schizophrenia, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London where he is clinical lecturer in psychiatry.
Natalie MacGarvieNatalie MacGarvie has been working in the Deaf Community for 10 years in various educational settings and alongside this, now works for Triangle facilitating children and young people’s consultative groups, for mainly those who use sign language. Natalie acts as a communicator between children and others, both individually and in groups and also consults directly with children. Natalie has trained in British Sign Language at the University of Sussex and is NVQ4 Language qualified. Natalie has been involved in various Triangle training, supporting Deaf colleagues with interpretation and voice over and taken part in the production of new training resources. She provides regular communication and admin support for a Deaf colleague and has undertaken some advocacy work. Natalie is also part of the admin team, supporting project work and administrative duties and taking the office anchor role from time to time.
Andrea MacLeodAndrea MacLeod is a Lecturer in Autism Studies at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, where she co-ordinates courses directed at professionals who support adults with autism and Asperger syndrome, including social workers and social care staff. Prior to taking up post at the university she spent many years working in the voluntary sector, developing innovative models of support for adults with autism and Asperger syndrome, including self-advocacy groups, models of supported living and supported employment. She is also a member of the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) based within the University of Birmingham and has been involved in a number of research and educational projects related to the autism spectrum. Andrea has a particular interest in outcomes for adults on the autism spectrum and has published in both academic and practitioner journals.
Samantha MannDr Samantha Mann graduated from the University of Portsmouth in 2001 with a PhD (funded by the ESRC), which involved analysing the behaviour of high-stake liars and truth-tellers, specifically suspects in their police interviews. She then showed clips of these suspects to police officers to see if they could tell when they were lying or truth-telling.
This research culminated in her thesis “Suspects, Lies and Videotape: An investigation into telling and detecting lies in police/suspect interviews”. She is now a research fellow at the University of Portsmouth, working with Professor Aldert Vrij on enhancing deception detection through increasing cognitive load in interview situations. She has published a number of journal articles and book chapters in the area of deceptive behaviour and detecting deceit.
Ruth MarchantRuth’s background is in developmental psychology. She works mostly with disabled children and with very young children; assessing their needs, enabling them to give evidence and giving expert opinion and communication advice to the courts. Ruth has been a Registered Intermediary with the Ministry of Justice since 2007. Ruth has taught and published widely in this field, writing the guidance on interviewing disabled children for Achieving Best Evidence, and the guidance on assessing disabled children in the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families. Ruth co-directs Triangle, an independent organisation working with children across the UK. Triangle provides a range of services including expert opinion to the courts and skilled communication support, both to children with communication impairments and to very young children. Triangle has consulted with more than 2500 disabled children about their lives, their experiences and the services they use.
Lynn MartinLynn worked as a teacher and community education tutor, for over 20 years. This involved working extensively with children and young people in groups and on a one to one basis. She has a masters degree in Professional Studies (Counselling), an Advanced Diploma in Counselling and a Specialist Skills Certificate in Counselling Children and Adolescents. She is also an accredited hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner and a transactional analyst psychotherapist in clinical training.
As managing director of Quality Training UK, she works extensively as a freelance trainer and consultant, and specialises in developing new courses and in house training programmes, both for the caring professions and within the commercial world. Lynn is also a qualified and experienced counselling supervisor.
Lynn currently offers a free counselling service for local young people alongside her private counselling practice, working extensively with children from the age of four years and young people with anger management issues.
Adrian Matthews
Adrian has been working with refugees and asylum seekers for much of his professional life. In 1994 he joined the Refugee Legal Centre (RLC) as a caseworker specialising in presenting appeals against refusal of asylum before the immigration courts.
In 2000 he was appointed regional manager for RLC at Oakington lmmigration Detention Centre. Oakington fostered a particular interest in age assessment as significant numbers of age disputed cases were detained as adults. In late 2003, Adrian set up and managed the Refugee and Asylum Seeking Children's Project at the Children's Legal Centre (CLC) based at the University of Essex.
In 2004, CLC in conjunction with Cambridge Social Services organised the first national conference on age assessment bringing together lawyers, social work practitioners and managers. Since 2007, Adrian has worked as a senior policy development officer for the Children's Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley Green where he has a specific brief for asylum-seeking children.
Fiona McEwenDr Fiona McEwen graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2001 with degrees in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, and Neuroscience. She spent two years working as a vet for the PDSA – a charity that provides free or low cost veterinary treatment for those on a low income – then returned to study while working part-time as a locum vet.
Her doctoral research, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, was on social development in typically developing children and those with Autism Spectrum Disorders and she has continued autism research as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She is also carrying out research on the association between childhood animal cruelty and family violence, and researched a recent briefing document for the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology: Pets, Families, and Interagency Working (POSTnote 350, January 2010).
Her doctoral and postdoctoral research has been supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Autism Speaks, and the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
Ruth McGovern
Ruth has 15 years experience in health and social care, working with both adults and young people. A qualified social worker and eclectic humanistic counsellor, her specialist interest is drug and alcohol. Ruth has worked in a wide range of community and residential services including arrest referral schemes, youth offending substance use work, probation, therapeutic communities, as well as supervising a community drug and alcohol team. Ruth is currently employed within a research team working evaluating the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of screening, brief interventions and stepped care with alcohol users. She has PhD in Sociology from Newcastle University, researching crack cocaine cultures in an area in the North East of England.
Margaret McGowanMargaret McGowan has worked as an education adviser and writer for 14 years, many of them as publications manager for the Advisory Centre for Education. Now a freelance consultant, she currently provides legal advice one day a week to parents of children with statements of special educational needs on behalf of the Independent Panel for Special Education Advice. This provides a useful reality check for her main occupation of writing materials for professionals and parents. These have included website advice on school transport and complaints, input to policy documents and government guidance on special education and bullying, and training materials for volunteers and advocacy workers on special education and exclusion from school.
Margaret works with a range of organisations including Council for Disabled Children, the Who Cares Trust, Lawpack, Centre Forum and Save the Children.
Brendan McGrathBrendan McGrath has worked for Gloucestershire County Council since 1987, and currently holds the post of Private Fostering Advisor. He qualified as a social worker in 1980 and has worked in residential, youth offending and fieldwork prior to taking up his current post in 1998. He has been a long-standing member of the BAAF Special Interest Group on private fostering and contributed to various working parties and research projects in relation to private fostering. He provides training courses on behalf of Gloucestershire Childrens Safeguarding Board, and the Gloucestershire County Council’s Children and Young People’s Directorate.
Pat McMullan
I have worked within the social work profession for more than 25 years. I am a qualified social worker, registered with the General Care Council and I have a diploma in therapeutic child care. I worked for much of my career within Kent social services, and during that time I gained experience working with very complex traumatised children initially within residential settings and finally within the wider general community. I worked for a period within fostering and adoption, followed by many years as a children and families social worker. Finally, I worked as a manager within an initial assessment team. I have run a variety of training courses over the years, mainly related to direct work with children and in relation to life story work. I have also had experience in co-running In Touch with Children courses. During my career as a social worker, I developed specialist skills in direct work with children. This has included:
The rehabilitation of children at home.
Life story work to prepare children for adoption/permanency.
Direct work focused on developing coping strategies to address issues related to trauma.
Helping children to develop an understanding of safe caring and developing an understanding of appropriate sexual boundaries.
In line with this work, I have given guidance and support to families who are caring for emotionally complex children. Since 2003, I have worked as an independent social worker and trainer.
Uma Mehta
Uma Mehta is chief lawyer in the Community Services Legal Team at the London Borough of Islington. She is a solicitor – advocate (higher rights civil-proceedings), LLB honours and has a diploma in child protection and a certificate in counselling skills. She is also a Law Society Children Panel member, an external Law Society assessor, a local authority representative LGG trainer and chair of the Law Society children’s sub committee.
Ed MitchellEd is a solicitor specialising in social care law. He is the General Editor of Social Care Law Today (Arden Davies Publishing) and a Consultant Editor to the Mental Health Law Review and the Journal of Social Housing Law. Ed also writes a regular column for New Law Journal on community care and disability law and is a contributor on social care legal matters to various other publications including the Child and Family Law Quarterly and the Journal of Social Welfare Law.
Fiona Mitchell
Fiona Mitchell works as a social researcher. She has previously worked on studies about people who go missing, the experiences of young people who have runaway or who have been forced to leave home, and on service provision for young runaways. She is currently working for The Children's Society and as an independent consultant. The reviews that she has conducted for Community Care Inform have been completed while she was working as an independent consultant .
Dr Raja MukherjeeDr Raja Mukherjee is a consultant psychiatrist for people with learning disabilities with a special interest in neurodevelopmental disorders across the lifespan. He runs a specialist neurodevelopmental assessment clinic for specialist diagnosis of people on the Autistic spectrum or with neurodevelopmental disorders and complex behaviours across the lifespan. As part of his specific research interest he has developed an expertise in Fetal Alcohol syndrome since discovering the lack of knowledge and research in the UK over 7 years ago. Since 2006 he has undertaken clinical evaluation and supervision of over 40 children exposed to prenatal drugs and alcohol. He is particularly interested in how FASD fits into the wider neurodevelopmental picture and whether it has a specific behavioural phenotype. Dr Mukherjee has spoken at over 50 local, national and international conferences related to FASD and has given expert advice to the DOH, BMA, and a House of Lords subcommittee on FASD.
Eileen MunroEileen Munro is a Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She was a social worker for many years before taking up an academic career. She has studied philosophy, in particular the philosophy of science, and this has fuelled her interest in the reasoning skills needed in social work. Her current research interests are in how best to combine intuitive and analytic reasoning in risk assessment and decision making in child protection. She is also studying the role of the wider organisational system in promoting or hindering good critical thinking. In collaboration with SCIE, she has been adapting the systems approach to investigating adverse events in aviation and health to the social care field. Recent publications are a second edition of her book Effective Child Protection, published by Sage, and ‘Managing Societal and Institutional Risk in Child Protection;, in Risk Analysis.
Lisa NandyLisa Nandy is the policy adviser for young refugees at The Children’s Society. She currently chairs the Refugee Children’s Consortium, a coalition of leading voluntary organisations working on behalf of refugee children.
Previously Lisa was a policy and research officer at the youth homelessness charity, Centrepoint, and authored the report, ‘Waiting In Line: Young Refugees in the Labour Market’. She has also worked for Neil Gerrard MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees. Lisa has a masters degree in public policy and is a school governor at a primary school in west
Kieran O'Hagan Kieran O’Hagan qualified as a social worker in 1974, and specialized in child protection work in inner city areas for over twenty years. He was a Principal Case-worker (Child Abuse) in Leeds, and Guardian ad litem serving the Northeast of England. In 1991, he joined the School of Social Work at Queen’s University, Belfast. As Reader, he carried out research into how health, social care and educational staff were responding to a minority linguistic group in N. Ireland. He has published eight critically acclaimed books on child abuse and related topics, and scores of articles for national and international journals. A feature of his books is the use of fiction to dramatize the emotions and trauma observed in much health and social care practice. His first social work novel The Verdi Solution was published in 2009.
Vivienne O'Neale
Vivienne O’Neale has worked as a childcare practitioner and manager over many years. She was a policy officer at the CRE and has been involved with issues relating to race and social work, particularly in relation to children. She has also been a researcher, lecturer and co-ordinator of a Diploma in social work course. She was Chief Welfare Officer to the Government of Grenada. She has managed services both in the public and voluntary sectors and co edited “Race &Social Work”, Vivienne Coombe and Alan Little (1986 Tavistock publications). She has over 10 years experience working with various inspectorates and is currently a social work consultant.
Charlie Orrell Charlie Orrell is a Registered Intermediary with the Ministry of Justice, supporting children’s communication with the police and courts. Charlie is a qualified speech and language therapist. She specialises in working with children with physical and/or learning difficulties, their families and other professionals in their lives. She has a particular interest in supporting children who are non-verbal to develop alternative methods of communication.
Nathalie Noret
Nathalie Noret is a developmental psychologist and the co-director of the unit of adolescent research at York St John University. Her research interests focus primarily around adolescent peer relationships, in particular experiences and correlates of bullying and the development of friendships. Recently she has been involved in a number of research projects on the nature and prevalence of cyberbullying in children and teenagers and is particularly interested in children and young people’s use of ICT. Nathalie was a member of the DCFS cyberbullying task force which developed the cyberbullying guiidance for schools and regularly presents at conferences and training days on the nature of cyberbullying and how to tackle this in schools.
Ian Partridge
Ian Partridge was born in Cornwall. After reading history at Cambridge he became a residential social worker in London, a decision acknowledged every year at Christmas by his late grandmother asking him: "When are you going to get a proper job?". He worked in various residential settings in and around London, qualifying at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, London in 1987 before moving to York to work in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. In CAMHS he worked both in the community and in-patient services specialising in working in the ares of eating disordes, family, therapy, bereavement, parental risk assessment and working with both victims and perpetrators of abuse. He provided training to a variety of disciplines in both health and social services and has co-authored many articles on mental health services both on clinical and managerial matters. He is the joint editor with Greg Richardson of CAMHS - An Operational Handbook (Gaskell, 2003) a second revised edition of which is currently in preparation. He lives in Bradford and is married to a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry. In 2001 he escaped from social work by becoming a full-time house husband and dad, though he regularly teaches on a masters course for new qualified psychiatrists.
Jonathan Pearce
Since 2002, Jonathan Pearce has been the Director of Adoption UK, a national membership charity (and adoption support agency) for prospective adopters, adoptive parents and long-term foster carers, which provides information, advice, support and training. He has been closely involved in all the key adoption initiatives of the last six years, contributing vital input from the perspective of adoptive families. He is currently a member of the following bodies/initiatives:
He has a background in the voluntary sector, law and journalism. He worked for many years at the Legal Action Group (a charity campaigning for access to justice for disadvantaged groups) and also for Community Care magazine as a journalist specialising in adoption and children’s issues.
Charlotte Pearson Charlotte Pearson is a freelance strategic consultant working with a range of public sector and voluntary organisations. Charlotte works in the areas of independent evaluation, strategy development, consultation and participation and social research. Charlotte has experience of research and evaluation in a range of areas including family support and Sure Start Children’s Centres. Charlotte has worked in strategic services, research and in an operational capacity as a substance misuse worker. Charlotte’s research interests include exposing the specific factors which contribute to change and improved outcomes for individual families who receive support services. Charlotte studied a BA Dual Hons in Sociology and Applied Social Studies, followed by a MA, both at Keele University. Charlotte is an Associate Member of the Chartered Management Institute. Charlotte lives in North Wales with her husband and two young children.
Richard Pitcairn Richard is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bedfordshire. His background is in working with children and families, and with looked after adolescents. He has worked in social services training for many years, with a main interest in practice teaching, following a period of working freelance as a trainer in social care, mostly for social services, but also for other bodies, including health services, education, and voluntary agencies. He now works on both the undergraduate and the masters degrees, with some involvement in post-qualifying awards, teaching theory and methods, communication skills, evidence-based practice and academic and professional skills.
Gretchen Precey Gretchen Precey has been an independent social worker, trainer and consultant since for 9 years. Her background is in local authority child protection work where she served as both a practitioner and a manager for fifteen years. As an associate of Triangle, an organisation based in Brighton that works with disabled children and young people, she has an interest in assessment, communication and protection issues concerning disabled children and offers training and direct assessment work in this area. She also has published papers on fabricated or induced illness and lectures nationally on this subject as well as appearing as an expert witness in civil cases concerning FII. Many of her current training commitments involve practice issues for child welfare professionals in implementing the common assessment framework.
Jonathan Price Jonathan is Policy and Communications Officer for the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) Network, based at Islington Council. Jonathan works on a number of NRPF policy concerns with government departments, including the UK Border Agency, the Interpersonal Violence Unit and the Department for Communities and Local Government. He manages the NRPF enquiry line, runs training sessions on NRPF and undertakes consultancy work for organisations in the statutory and voluntary sectors. Prior to joining the NRPF Network, Jonathan was a Researcher at the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR), based at City University, London.
Rhiannon Prys-Owen Rhiannon’s professional background is in education working with children and young people with a diverse range of individual support needs in mainstream and special schools as a subject teacher and senior manager.
For the last 12 years she has been working in the voluntary sector supporting the development of inclusive community services and activities in Somerset. She was a children’s service manager for Barnardo’s and one of her current posts is the Extended Services Co-ordinator for the Children and Young people’s Partnership in Somerset (CHYPPS). Her role is to support the development of partnerships between the voluntary, community and independent sectors in the delivery of extended schools across Somerset.
In her other role she is the South West Regional Adviser for the Anti-Bullying Alliance working with local authorities, schools and partners agencies to deliver a national and regional programme of support working closely with the National Healthy Schools Programme and the Secondary and Primary Strategies.
Penny Reeves Penny has been a magistrate since 1982 and belongs to the Gwent Bench which comprises 330 magistrates. Penny joined the Domestic Panel in 1985, then the Family Proceedings Panel following its creation by the Children Act 1988. In 2002, Penny was appointed Chair of the South-East Gwent FPC and the following year, helped steer the two FPCs in Gwent into one county-wide Gwent FPC, consisting of 50 magistrates, and becoming its first Chair. Penny also sits on the Local Family Justice Council for SE Wales, as well as Family Court User Groups for Gwent and Mid-Glamorgan. Penny have worked with the Judicial Studies Board on developing continuation training for FPC Chairs, as well as on the development of the reference books for use in Family court. Penny is married with two daughters, both of whom live in Australia, and now write biographies, after a lifetime spent writing features.
James Rucker Dr James Rucker is a clinical research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry and honorary specialist registrar in Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in South London. He practises clinically at an early intervention service for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses, which provides specialist assessment and treatment for patients with psychosis, and at the National Affective Disorders unit, which provides national level assessment and intervention for patients with a broad range of treatment-refractory mood disorders. His research interests include the genetic and neurobiological basis of psychosis and affective disorders
Dr Alan Rushton Alan Rushton is Reader in Adoption Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and head of the Social Work and Social Care Section. For many years he was director of the MSc programme in Mental Health Social Work. He has been involved in many research investigations concerning children at risk, but is primarily engaged in follow up studies of children late placed in foster and adoptive homes and in the analysis of predictors of outcome. His current interest is in effective adoption support and he is currently conducting a randomised controlled trial to test the effectiveness of two adoptive parenting intervention programmes.
Dr Sara Scott Dr Sara Scott is co-director of DMSS Research & Consultancy, an independent organisation undertaking research, evaluation, training and consultancy in health and social care. Clients include goverment departments, national voluntary organisations, and regional and local government. She is co-author of the Mayor of London's third State of London's Children report (GLA 2007). Sara has been involved in research in the fields of sexual violence and mental health for over 15 years. She is an experienced programme evaluator committed to the development of outcome focused policy and practice.
She began her working life as a play worker and community artist and then enjoyed a first career in educational and social action broadcasting: working with the BBC, ITV companies and Channel 4 to develop programming and support on topics such as AIDS, adult literacy, breast cancer, drugs and debt. Her role involved developing campaign and communications strategies to reach "hard-to-reach" groups via the mass media. From 1999 to 2001 she was director of The Gender Training Initiative at the University of Liverpool - a Department of Health funded project developing training for staff in prisons and the secure psychiatric sector. From 2001-2007 she held the post of principal research officer at Barnardo's where she lead a programme of research on sexual exploitation. Her book The Politics & Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Disbelief is published by Open University Press (2001).
Lorraine Schaffer
Lorraine is the Director of the Centre for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at the Institute of Family Therapy (IFT) and Chair of the postgraduate programme of courses in conflict resolution and mediation studies run by IFT in collaboration with Birkbeck College, University of London. Lorraine has been a practising family mediator since 1995. Previously Lorraine worked as a social worker with adolescents and families and as a tutor on the Diploma in Social Work at Brunel University. Lorraine's other professional training was a two year course at the Tavistock Clinic - the "Advanced Course in Consultation to Individuals, Groups and Organisations". Lorraine has written articles for the Journal Mediation Practice, Family Law and previously for various social work journals. She is one of the mediators interviewed for a newly published (2007) book Developing the Craft of Mediation by Marian Roberts.
Clive SellickClive Sellick is a Reader in the School of Social Work and Psychology at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He is the School’s Director of Learning and Teaching Quality. He also teaches on the MA/BA Social Work programmes and the Specialist Child Care Award. His research interest is fostering especially the role and function of independent fostering providers. He has conducted four linked studies between 1998 and 2005 and is the author and joint author of many articles, books and book chapters arising from this research. He is currently engaged in a DSCF funded study of adoption support for birth relatives and contact and in a Nuffield Foundation funded study of matching and permanence in foster care. Dr Sellick is a former social worker, team leader and magistrate.
Peter SelmanPeter Selman is Visiting Fellow in the School of Geography, Politics & Sociology at the Newcastle University, UK. His main areas of research interest are child adoption, teenage pregnancy and demographic change & public policy.
He is currently Chair of the Network for Intercountry Adoption and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Agencies for Adoption & Fostering. He is editor of Intercountry Adoption; Development, trends and perspectives (British Agencies for Adoption & Fostering, 2000) and has written many articles and chapters on adoption policy.
His main research focus in recent years has been on the demography of child adoption with a special emphasis on intercountry adoption. He has presented many papers at international conferences on this topic and has acted as research consultant to international organizations such the United Nations Population Division, the Hague Conference on Private International Law and the Innocenti Research Centre in Florence..
Clare Seymour Clare Seymour is a senior lecturer in social work at Anglia Ruskin University. She teaches social work law, communication and interviewing skills, and professional accountability to social work students at undergraduate and masters level. Her social work experience includes 16 years of local authority social work, latterly in a child care team where she had wide experience of court work, and bereavement support within a general practice. She is the author, jointly with Richard Seymour, of Courtroom Skills for Social Workers (2007), Exeter: Learning Matters.
Rikki Sneddon Rikki Sneddon; MA, CQSW, Diploma in Child Protection Studies, has worked in the field of Child Protection and Child Welfare for over 20 years. He has operated as a specialist Child Protection Social Worker, Acting Fieldwork Manager and as Child Protection Lead for Social Work and the local Child Protection Committee (CPC). Rikki is committed to improving standards of practice and to better supporting practitioners with accessible and relevant materials. He has developed and delivered on Child Protection Training across the spectrum of professional requirements from foundation through to advanced with both single and inter agency staff.
Rikki maintains a direct statutory strategic and operational role working in a Local Authority but also has broader input across the UK as an Independent Trainer/Consultant. He provides specialist training in the areas of Risk Assessment, Child Neglect, Emotional Abuse and Teenage Intimate Partner Violence as well as delivering to specialist Police courses in Scotland.
Links
Key Papers in Child Welfare & Child Protection 2006 on Fife Council CPC Site and Web Resource Directory on Social Service Knowledge Scotland (SSKS)
Steve Spencer Steve Spencer is an independent consultant offering advice, support and training to those involved in delivering services to children and young people. He specialises in the youth justice arena and preparation for inspections.
He has more than 33 years experience in social care. Qualifying as a social worker in 1979, he has worked in and managed a wide range of social work services for both children and adults. He has undertaken further training and qualifications in management and systemic family therapy.
Steve has been actively involved in the youth justice system since the early 1980s, setting up the original intermediate treatment services through juvenile justice services, youth justice services and latterly youth offending services.
He has spoken at local, regional, national and European conferences on youth justice matters with a particular emphasis on the use of managing the demand for custody. He was successful in obtaining intensive fostering pilot status for the only youth offending service in the country, and project managed its introduction and development
He also has experience in running and managing a range of children’s services including, a family centre; day care; residential units; remand fostering schemes; and fieldwork services and has been actively involved in the child protection arena
Helen Stansfield Helen’s current job title is Junior Cognitive Behavioural Therapist / Specialist Clinical Drugs Worker for the NHS. She works part time at the Substance Misuse Service in Bradford City centre (Bradford and Airedale PCT) counselling and preparing prescriptions, preparing treatment / care plans for drug dependent patients over the age of 18. Helen also works part time at The One Stop Clinic at Bradford Royal Infirmary (NHS teaching hospital) providing CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), preparing treatment/care plans, carrying out staff and student training and writing policies and procedures for the service for drug / alcohol dependent pregnant women. Helen has a BA Hons degree in Pscyhology and Business Management from Leeds University (2001) and has recently (2008) finished and passed a Master's (MSc) degree in Applied Psychology from the University of Manchester. Helen is currently undertaking a graduate diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy at York University. She is also a member of BABCP (British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies).
Ann Stuart Ann Stuart is a retired police officer. Ann joined the police in 1979 and retired in November 2009. During her service Ann assisted in setting up one of the first domestic violence units in London in the Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1990. In 1997 Ann joined the child protection team covering the London Borough of Redbridge and Waltham Forest and spent 4 years investigating some of the most serious crimes against children and a number of historic child abuse cases. In 2001 during the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie Ann became the dedicated policy officer for child protection in the Metropolitan Police and revised, wrote and published the policy and standard operating procedures for Child Abuse Investigation. Ann was involved in the development of a number of publications including the first national police guidance in Safeguarding Children and Child Abuse Investigiaton in 2005 and the first London Child Protection Procedures and was on the working group that revised the Home Office Circular titled - ‘The duties and powers of the police under The Children Act 1989’ which relates to the police power under S46 - Police Protection as referred to in this guidance. Ann has written child protection policy for various charities and sport organisations.
Ann remained as policy officer until November 2008 when she took over as training manager of the Child Abuse Investigation Command training unit to oversea the delivery and revision of joint child protection training with social workers, Achieving Best Evidence training and the delivery of the Specialist Child Abuse Investigative Development Programme for police as developed by the National Police Improvement Agency.
Ann has been awarded 4 commendations relating to her work as an investigator in the field of Domestic violence and Child Abuse Investigation.
The Fostering Network The Fostering Network is the UK’s leading charity for all those involved in fostering. We are committed to raising the standards of care for children and young people who are fostered throughout the UK.
We have a membership of more than 55,000 foster carers, almost all local authorities and health and social services trusts, as well as independent fostering providers and local foster care associations.
As the UK’s voice of foster care we work with our members to share knowledge and best practice, promote foster and campaign for positive changes in foster care.
For more information about our membership packages, campaigns, policy work, publications, training, conferences, consultancy and information services, please visit our website at http://www.fostering.net/ or contact us on 020 7620 6400
Dr June ThoburnDr June Thoburn is an emeritus professor of social work at the University of East Anglia. She qualified as a social worker in 1963 and worked in local authority child and family social work and generic practice in England and Canada before taking up a joint appointment (with Norfolk County Council) at UEA in 1979. As a founding director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family and of the Making Research Count collaboration , she has a particular interest in finding innovative ways of helping social workers to use knowledge from a range of sources in their practice.
Her teaching and research have encompassed family support and child protection services for children and families in the community and services for children placed away from home, whether with family members, in foster care or with adoptive families. She recently completed a Leverhulme Foundation funded study of children in out-of-home care in 14 countries and has close links with researchers on child and family welfare issues around the world.
She is frequently asked to provide expert evidence (in the UK and abroad) in complex child welfare cases, and to undertake analyses of events leading to child deaths or serious injury. She was until recently vice chair of the GSCC and was awarded the CBE for services to social work in 2002. She is currently the chairperson of the Jersey Child Protection Committee.
Nigel Thomas
Nigel Thomas has been Professor of Childhood and Youth Research in the School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, since 2007. He was previously a social work practitioner and manager in Derbyshire and Oxfordshire, and then taught and researched in social work and childhood studies at Swansea University from 1992. He has conducted research with looked after children, with young carers, and in children’s rights, advocacy and participation, including a number of projects with children and young people as researchers. He is co-director of The Centre for children and young people’s participation. His publications include Children, Family and the State (2002), Social Work with Young People in Care (2005) and Children, Politics and Communication (2009). He is co-editor of A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation (2010) and of the journal Children & Society.
Caroline Thompson
Caroline Thompson qualified as a social worker and worked in child protection for many years before taking the decision to work as an independent trainer and consultant. She also spent five years as a non-executive director of a health care trust. Since then she has worked closely with several local authorities on projects as varied as developing an induction and assessment programme for overseas social workers to the implementation of a series of research based practice tools and the roll out of the common assessment framework. Enjoying both the chance to read and to write, Caroline particularly values the opportunity to spend time seeking out relevant research studies or policy documents and integrating these as practice bulletins and training resources for child care professionals. She even enjoys writing procedures.
Peter Toolan Peter Toolan is a Consultant Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist. He trained at the Scottish Institute of Human Relations, Edinburgh and Tavistock & Portman Clinic, London. He has 25 years experience of working with children, adolescents and parents, much of this in NHS Child & Family Services in the North East of England. He is a well known teacher and clinical supervisor for CAMHS and Social Care professionals. His published writing and research on learning disabilities looked after children and on infants’ and children’s emotional development has been well received. In recent years he has pioneered now thriving community Infant Mental Health clinics in South Tyneside and Newcastle and helped to establish and then teach on the MA Psychoanalytic Observation Studies course at Northumbria University in Newcastle. In 2003 he joined the UK’s largest independent foster care agency (Foster Care Associates) as Consultant in Psychotherapy for their therapeutic services. He speaks at numerous conferences throughout the country and currently runs a highly regarded 10 week course on Infant Mental Health, which has been delivered very successfully in Edinburgh, Newcastle and Aberdeen.
Dr Eva Tsouana
Dr Eva Tsouana is currently working as a registrar in community paediatrics in the Warwickshire Primary Care Trust. This post is part of the paediatrics rotation. Eva graduated from Athens Medical School in Greece and started her medical training in the UK in 2006. Eva became a Member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in October 2008. Eva is a member of the Young People's Health Special Interest Group. Eva's special interest lies in paediatric neurology and her career goal is to become a consultant Paediatrician with a special interest in epilepsy.
Neil Ventress
Neil comes from a background of almost thirty years of social work practice with children and their families as a social worker, a manager, and as an inter-agency trainer. After starting his career with a short period as a residential social worker Neil moved to fieldwork in 1977, and he gained his Certificate of Qualification in Social Work in 1982; he has since gained qualifications in management, a Masters Degree in Social Work Studies, and the GSCC Advanced Award in Social Work. He continues to be a Registered Social Worker.
Neil joined Teesside University in 2007, where he teaches on both the undergraduate and post-qualifying social work programmes. His interests still centre on social work with children and families, and particularly in safeguarding children. Neil’s principal research interests are around the field of child neglect, although he also has an interest in inter-professional education and he has been an active member of the Project Advisory Group for a large-scale piece of research funded by the DoH / DCSF on the effectiveness of inter-agency safeguarding training.
Neil is Programme Leader for Teesside University’s post-qualifying programmes for social workers working with children, young people, their families and carers.
Jim WalkerJim Walker is an independent social worker and psychotherapist. He previously worked at the Clermont Unit, a specialist child protection unit in Brighton. He now works independently. He has a particular interest in attachment theory, trauma, dissociative states and post-traumatic stress disorder. He was an associate lecturer at Sussex University from 2002-2007 and taught on a range of social work courses. Jim has written widely about unresolved trauma and child protection; communication and social work from an attachment perspective; and the relevance of attachment theory to fostering and adoption.
Mitzi Waltz
Dr Mitzi Waltz is a Lecturer in Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER), with which she has contributed to several key research projects. These include the Autism Education Trust report on the state of autism education in England, and the Inclusion Development Programmes for autism released by DCSF in 2009. Her areas of research interest include the history of autism, the impact of media images of autism, the particular needs of BME and ‘hard to reach’ families, and working with people on the autism spectrum as research partners. She also has an academic background in media and cultural studies, with an emphasis on disability studies, and is the parent of a young man on the autism spectrum.
Linda WardLinda Ward is Professor of Disability and Social Policy at the University of Bristol and former director of the Norah Fry Research Centre, which undertakes applied research and teaching in relation to disabled children and adults with learning disabilities. She was previously an advisor on disability to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Linda has researched and published widely in the field of learning difficulties and disability, with a particular interest in equal opportunities, ethical issues, support to disabled children and their families (especially at transition) and research to bring about policy and practice change. Areas of work at the moment include support to parents with learning disabilities and their children and the experiences of offenders with learning disabilities in the criminal justice system. She is also currently acting as a specialist adviser to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’Inquiry on Human Rights and Adults with Learning Disabilities.
Dr Jean Ware
Jean Ware is Reader in Education (Special Educational Needs), School of Education and Lifelong Learning, Bangor University. She was previously Director of Special Education, St Patrick’s College Dublin. She has worked as a teacher, mainly with pupils with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties and as a university teacher and researcher at both the London University Institute of Education and Cardiff University.
Debby WatsonDebby Watson is a research fellow at the Norah Fry Research Centre, University of Bristol. Her main research interests concern the involvement of disabled children in research and services, particularly children with complex health care needs and communication difficulties. Other interests include issues for families bringing up a disabled child and research ethics. She has recently been working on a research project entitled ‘Participation in Education’, looking at ways in which disabled children with little or no speech can be involved in their education. She was previously a social worker, including running a short break service for children with learning difficulties.
Flo Watson
Dr FA Watson has degrees in Sociology, Criminology, Social Work and Social Policy. Her doctoral research examined decision-making about boundaries of information-sharing and risk assessment in social work. She is currently employed as Cafcass’ Research Officer.
Previously she has worked as a Probation Officer in Canada, Children and Families Social Worker in Leeds, and Child Protection Coordinator in Bracknell. From 1999 to 2004 she was Lecturer in Social Work for Norwich City College where she completed research about effective teaching practice for social work ethics and values.
Ferelyth WattFerelyth Watt is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in Tower Hamlets CAMHS (East), based at the Emmanuel Miller Centre. She has a background in youth work, development education and teaching prior to training at the British Association of Psychotherapists. She is responsible for leading the development of under 5’s input in the East and is committed to the development of accessible provision for this age group both within Tier 3 settings and those in the community, such as Children’s Centres. Ferelyth has developed a project for short-term work with under 5’s and their parents/carers in a community setting. Integral to her work is her interest in cross-cultural work and both the theoretical and clinical implications for working with a diverse ethnic and religious client group. Ferelyth is undertaking a doctoral research project in this area. Ferelyth is also developing a multi-disciplinary complex needs assessment model and is particularly interested in the overlap between Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Learning Disabilities, ADHD, neglect and trauma.
Jan WayJan Way has worked in social work for over 30 years and in adoption for almost 21 years. She has specialised in intercountry adoption since the mid 1980s and now works as the training and development manager for Intercountry Adoption Centre in London. In addition she still undertakes assessment work with prospective adopters for several local authorities and a voluntary adoption agency and sits on an adoption panel. She is an adopted person herself and is also the parent of a young adult adopted from overseas.
Amy WeirAmy has more than 30 years' experience of working in children's services. She qualified as a social worker in 1978. She has worked in social care, health and the voluntary sector. She was the national lead inspector at the Social Services Inspectorate for Quality Protects and children's services performance. She was previously Deputy Director of Social Services in Somerset. She worked for DfES as an adviser for Every Child Matters until 2006. She currently works independently with local authorities on supporting improvements in children's services particularly in relation to safeguarding. Amy has always been interested in policy and practice development. She is very enthusiastic about the development of the Community Care Inform website and has been very pleased to be able to contribute to it. She sees it as an exciting tool for learning and developing practice.
Kirk Weir
Dr Kirk Weir (Consultant Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist; Suffolk) Kirk Weir is a UK trained medical practitioner who has specialised in child psychiatry for more than 30 years. He was an NHS Consultant Child Psychiatrist in CAMHS in London and Suffolk. Alongside clinical work he developed a role as an expert witness in the Family Court. He has given evidence in hundreds of private and public law cases to Courts in most areas of England and Wales. Following his experience of giving expert evidence during the epidemic of ritual sexual abuse cases he developed a special interest in children as witnesses. Over the last ten years he has taken a particular interest in children who are the subject of high conflict contact disputes between their separated parents.
Murray WhiteMurray White represents the UK on the International Council for Self Esteem, an organisation formed in 1990 and now established in over 70 countries. Its goals are to promote the concept of self esteem and its significance in individuals and society and to facilitate the co-ordination of self esteem activities and projects throughout the world. A head teacher for 30 years, in 1990 the Institute of Social Inventions gave Murray the education award of the year for his pioneering work introducing circle time and said “ it could be used with advantage in all schools.” Recognised internationally as lecturer and consultant he has presented workshops and keynotes in Europe, USA and all over the UK.
His interactive workshops are designed to enhance self-esteem in many settings, including families, schools, organisations and for individuals. He has organised two British conferences on self-esteem. He has contributed to many books and journals and is the author of 50 Activities for Raising Self-esteem ( Pearson Publishing) and Magic Circles: Self-esteem for Everyone In Circle Time (2nd edition Sage Publications November 2008 ). This is intended for use by children, teenagers and, new to this edition, adults as well.
His main studies in psychology, counselling and therapy were undertaken at the University of Surrey, the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust London and The Parent Network, London. Details of his work can be seen on his website: www.murraywhite-selfesteem.co.uk .
Jane WilliamsJane Williams is a barrister and a senior lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Swansea.
She was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1980, and stayed in private practice as a barrister until 1985. From 1985-1995 she worked in the Legal Adviser’s Branch at the Home Office in London, before being seconded to the Civil Service College where she worked until 1998. She was assistant counsel general for the National Assembly for Wales between 1999 and 2000 before moving to join the law department at the University of Swansea. She currently lectures in the School of Law at the university on subjects including legal issues in social work.
Her research interests include devolution and divergence in law and policy; children, rights and citizenship; multi-level policy implementation (especially relating to human rights); legal issues in public service delivery (especially social care). She is a member of the Wales UNCRC Monitoring Group.
She is a widely-published author and her latest publication is Child Law for Social Work which was published by Sage in 2008.
Sue Williams
Sue Williams is the Senior School Improvement Officer for Inclusion and Safeguarding (interim). She trained to be a secondary school teacher in the late 1970s and taught for seven years before taking a career break to raise a family. During this time she tutored part time at the local FE College. She returned full time in the 1990s and moved to the primary phase. As part of her re-training for this new work she gained a Post Graduate Diploma (Early Childhood Education) and an MA in Educational Studies. This higher level of study had a Special Educational Needs (SEN) focus as she had become the school’s SEN Co-ordinator (SENCo) and was leading the local SENCO Network. In addition, she undertook day release from school and evening work at Edge Hill University College. In 2000 she began work for Liverpool Authority where she passed her Ofsted training in Inspection Skills, gained the National Professional Qualification for Headship and School Improvement Partner (SIP) accreditation. She currently manages a team of Inclusion Development Officers, leads on the Dyslexia Friendly Schools Scheme and the Inclusion Charter Mark, trains and supports school staffs in inclusion and safeguarding issues and works as a SIP.
Mary Jane WillowsMary Jane Willows has spent all of her working life working with children and young people.
After years of experience in a variety of settings she established a charity providing care and support for disadvantaged parents and children under five. Alongside this she was teaching child care in college and running parent craft and drama classes in a men’s prison
Fifteen years ago, whilst still running the charity, she was diagnosed with CFS/ME (from which she has now recovered). Once she was back on her feet, she moved into work with social services as an inspector of residential care homes for children, adults with learning difficulties and older people.
Her next post was three years as the head of care for three residential children’s homes, a parent and baby home and a school held for three years.
She has been with the Association of Young People with ME for five years and feels that working with the members is a real pleasure and an inspiration, and what keeps them going through the daily challenges they face in raising awareness and funds!
Gaynor WinghamGaynor Wingham has a social work career spanning over 35 years, and has worked within social work and education services, at practitioner and senior management level. She has always had a particular interest in the interface between services and promoting good multi agency working within children and adult services. She had a longstanding interest in the application of research to social work practice, and supporting post qualification development. She regularly contributes to professional journals and policy forums. She now works independently and runs a successful consultancy, Professional Independents, providing training and consultancy within the statutory and independent sectors. She has established a comprehensive service for complaints investigations, management enquiries and independent case reviews working with associate consultants.
Dr Jane YeomansJane Yeomans originally trained as a primary school teacher and taught in primary nursery and special schools. She is now a specialist senior educational psychologist working as a practitioner for Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in the Midlands and as an academic and professional tutor for initial and post qualification doctoral programmes in Educational Psychology at the University of Birmingham.
Her research interests include early years practice, reading acquisition/development and cognitive education, including the use of Dynamic Assessment. She is an external examiner for the Open University and is a verifier for the British Psychological Society Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing.
Her most recent publications, with Dr Christopher Arnold, are Psychology for Teaching Assistants, published by Trentham Books and Teaching, Learning and Psychology, published by David Fulton.