Seminar Programme

Social Work Cinema

In this video, Dr Tarsem Singh Cooner provides 5 proven tips that show you how to master research skills for success in your social work studies and beyond.

Seminar Room 6

Children have a right to have their voices heard and as such gathering their voice should be front and centre of the work we do in children’s social care. Social workers need to be skilled communicators with flexibility in their approach to helping children communicate in a way that suits their individual needs. Join Emma and Rachel to explore a range of toys, games, activities and books from Rochdale’s Direct Work Library; have a go at playing with these resources and considering how you can use these creatively with children, young people and their families. 

Emma Thompson & Rachel Kenyon, Advanced Practitioners, Core Skills & Knowledge Programme, Children’s Social Care, Rochdale Borough Council

Seminar Room 2

Seminar room 5

This seminar will provide an overview of working in Wales as a social worker and the different cultural landscape this entails, touching on the different legislation and language; national Initiatives; and the differences in continued professional development, including support provided for the first three years in practice and further qualification opportunities.

Join Mel to find out more about your journey as a Newly Qualified Social Worker in Wales.

Melanie Brindle, Practice Development Manager, Powys County Council

Seminar Room 1

This seminar will support you to start to develop your practice as a social worker through a trauma lens. You will explore how to recognise trauma and understand how trauma manifests in the daily lives for children and their parents, and how becoming a trauma informed social worker can strengthen your practice and enable you to respond to trauma in a way that reduces psychological and emotional harm, to support healing and recovery. We will introduce you to the multi-agency model of practice within Cheshire and West and Chester, ‘Our Way of Working’ and share with you our vision & best practice in how we are embedding a trauma informed approach across the  multi-agency  partnership. Come and find out how social work is an integral part of this vision and how it can empower you in your role to safeguard, protect and improve outcomes for the children and families and adults you are working with.

Anna Johnson, Innovation and Practice Development Lead & Louise Irving, Principal Social Worker

Social Work Cinema

Alexis Quinn, Julie Newcombe and Dr Dawn Cavanagh discuss the Mental Health Act proposals for autistic people and people with learning disabilities.

Seminar Room 3

Antser VR is an award-winning technology used by professionals to support vulnerable children and families. Our programme is used in almost 50% of local authorities, as well as NHS trusts, schools, the police and independent providers.

Through viewing a series of short Virtual Reality films, where adults can experience the life of an abused, neglected or exploited child, our programme increases empathy and enhances the understanding of a child’s emotions, trauma and potential triggers to improve the care, support and guidance practitioners can provide.

Created by multi-disciplinary experts, this powerful approach quickly and effectively delivers the knowledge, understanding and empathy that can otherwise take years to develop.

With exclusive previews of some of Antser's immersive storytelling films, and case studies from partners that are currently using the technology, don't miss this exciting opportunity to explore the latest innovation within social care.

Antser

Seminar Room 4

Social Work DISCovery is a professional development academy for social workers and teams. Join us for an interactive session that will help you to develop a deeper understanding of yourself and those around you. You will learn why at least 70% of people do not behave and communicate like you do, and how easy it is for miscommunications to damage professional and personal relationships. This session will help you to understand your behavioural tendencies and preferences enabling you to communicate better and value the diversity of others around you.

Nadine Boyne, Founder; and Jennifer Williams, Partner/Associate and Head of Service, Social Work DISCovery

Seminar Room 2

The charity Become is committed to making real change happen through amplifying the voices of children in care and young care leavers. This short seminar introduces #GoneTooFar - a campaign that highlights the devastating impact on children in care when they are moved far away from the people and places that matter to them.

Join us to consider what can be done to change this and how you could support as a social worker should this happen to a young person you work with.

Katy Hudson, Training & Development Manager, Become

Social Work Cinema

The Expressions of Self research project listened to minoritised looked-after young people’s narratives on ethnicity, religion and identity, to inform policy and practice about their needs. This session is an introduction to the research project and covers the early findings and explores the different kinds of impact that their identities can have on young people’s journeys through care.

Seminar room 6

This model presents an innovative approach for assessing needs and making care plans. It places a primary emphasis on identifying individuals' strengths and community resources. This framework guides frontline professionals through the different discussions required to achieve this.

Join this seminar to find out how you can implement a strengths-based approach in your own practice, and learn more about the Living Better Lives in Lancashire (LBLiL) programme.

Lisa Gilleade-Smith, Academy Practice Improvement, Manager, Lancashire County Council

Seminar Room 5

Ready to prioritise yourself for a change? Want to improve your self-care?

In the demanding field of social work, self-care often takes a back seat, even though you're regularly exposed to distress and trauma. This seminar is expertly crafted to address the specific challenges you face while equipping you with essential insights and actionable tools to construct a trauma-informed self-care strategy.

Discover personalised self-care approaches designed to meet your individual needs whilst using a trauma-informed approach. By the end of this seminar, you'll not only have a deeper understanding of trauma and self-care but also a concrete self-care plan in hand. It's time to shift your focus and put yourself first! Join this informative and transformative seminar to improve your work-life balance.

Le'Siran Edwards, Leadership Coach for Social Workers and Managers, Social Work Coaching Hub

Seminar Room 3

OurFamilyWizard is a co-parent communication platform to assist parents before, during, or after the divorce and separation process. It provides a safe and neutral 

environment for communication to be monitored whereby key issues about the child(ren) can be resolved. OurFamilyWizard is regularly used by parents who are going through the court process to resolve their child arrangement and finance matters. 

It is also regularly used by those who are using out-of-court resolution methods to support parents with their communication and prevent them from returning to court, where applicable. 

Learn how parents and family law professionals utilise its features to manage child arrangement matters and document communication. Learn who may access the family's activity and how to obtain court-admissible reports. 

OurFamilyWizard

Seminar Room 1

This session will discuss Tameside Adult Social Care’s role within the development of a multi-agency approach to working with adults who hoard. This work was undertaken following a particularly challenging scenario and has led to a positive approach to working with people who hoard, which has been co-produced and co-designed. There has been a big focus on challenging stigma, the development of peer support groups, and we are now in the phase of embedding this within the workforce.

Anna Jenkins, Principal Social Worker (and others TBC), Tameside MBC

Seminar Room 6

This seminar will focus on increasing awareness around what underpins trauma informed social work, its approaches, and what research tells us. It will look at how trauma-informed social work has shaped practice in Wigan and provide an opportunity to hear from their Experts by Experience group.

Experts by Experience are a group of domestic abuse survivors who work to shape and influence the service’s response to domestic abuse within the Wigan borough. 

They have agreed to provide testimonials of their own experiences of working with children’s social care and the family court systems. They will also offer their views on how a trauma-informed approach to practice directly positively shaped their experiences and outcomes and, conversely, how a non-trauma-informed approach contributed to furthering their experiences of abuse and revictimisation.

Leanne Droogan and Beth Hudson, Quality Assurance and Practice Development Practitioners, Wigan Council

Seminar Room 2

This session is for Social Workers and Team Leaders who are supporting children and families who are subject to immigration control. Suzanne and Maria will look at the responsibilities of local authorities in identifying and supporting children with insecure immigration status; embedding immigration support into practice including the importance of immigration advice and action plans for all children without secure status; and look at British Citizenship as an avenue for some children.

Suzanne Mahoney, Solicitor; and Maria Houlihan, Service Manager, Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU)

Social Work Cinema

In this video, Michael Dillon, Expert by Experience with Choice Support, interviews Amanda Stride, Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) Deputy Director for the local authority assessment programme. They discuss CQC’s new role in assessing how local authorities fulfil their duties Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (as amended by the Health and Care Act 2022). It also focuses on what local authority assessment means for people who use services and experts by experience.

Seminar Room 4

Supervision is a fundamental part of effective social work practice; it enables reflective practice to occur and ensures that evidence-based practice is followed. Supervision is an ongoing process in which practitioners and managers receive guidance, support and challenge in a formal setting.

Done well, it should provide the opportunity for workers to think, explore and confront issues that are pertinent to their ability to perform their role to the expected standard.

Find out how Liverpool City Council uses reflective supervision as a mutually beneficial exchange, adding value to social work practice.

Helen Lea, Principal Social Worker, Liverpool City Council

Social Work Cinema

Research led by Professor Paul Bywaters at the University of Huddersfield, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, aims to map and understand inequalities in child welfare intervention rates. This animation highlights some key findings from the research, and the questions that still need to be answered to address these inequities.

Nuffield Family Justice Observatory

Seminar Room 1

With our experience of working with many Local Authorities, we at Hugh Jones Solicitors often find that there is confusion surrounding the Court of Protection and the powers afforded to a Property and Affairs deputy, by the Court, to help manage the finances of a Protected Party/Service User within the care setting. Through attending this talk, Social Workers should expect to gain a greater understanding of a deputy’s responsibilities towards a client’s finances, how those powers can be used to assist in the provision of care and support for a client/Service User and where the limit of those powers lies.

Hugh Jones Solicitors - Independent Court of Protection Specialists

Seminar Room 3

Come and learn about the work of BASW England’s campaign activity and how to get involved.  This session will focus on the cost-of-living crisis and what BASW England are doing to support social workers through these challenging times.

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) is the UK’s professional membership organisation for social work and the independent voice of social work.  We champion social work and help members achieve the highest professional standards.

Josh Dixon, Policy, and Campaigns Officer, BASW England; and Liz Howard, Professional Officer, BASW England

BASW England has been working with stakeholders and people of lived experience to develop resources and guidance for social workers working in emergency planning.  In March, BASW will launch ‘Out of the Shadows’, a new book which focuses on the voices of both social workers and survivors who have experienced disasters including Hillsborough, Grenfell, the Manchester Arena Bombing and Kegworth Air Crash. 

Rebekah Pierre, Professional Officer, BASW England

Social Work Cinema

Understanding the perspectives of people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people, family and staff when transforming care for people in ‘long-stay’ hospitals.

SCIE, University of Birmingham

Seminar Room 2

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion is a high priority for everyone in Oldham Children’s Social Care. The priority reaches across the offer to our staff, and the services we provide to those we support. Join the Children’s Principal Social Worker as she discusses a practical tool to address inequality. How it can be utilised with the people we support, as well within supervision.

Stephanie Dixon, Head of Social Work Academy & Principal Social Worker, Oldham Council

Seminar Room 5

Join Le'Siran Edwards, Founder of Social Work Coaching Hub and host of the “Dear Social Worker, Let's Talk” podcast, for a vibrant discussion of the current state of the social work profession, exploring the emotional and professional toil on social workers and what is needed to support and retain social workers.

Have your say on these issues and contribute to an upcoming podcast episode on how to stop social workers leaving the profession.

Le'Siran Edwards, Leadership Coach for Social Workers and Managers, Social Work Coaching Hub

Seminar Room 6

Pregnancy in Mind is a preventative mental-health service designed to support parents-to-be who are at risk of, or currently experiencing, mild to moderate anxiety and depression during their pregnancy.

It is an antenatal group intervention delivered by professionals after the first trimester of pregnancy. Parents-to-be are able to attend the programme between 12 and 34 weeks gestation.

Join Tony and Chris to find out more about this innovative service.

Anthony Kelly; and Chris Dunn, Team Managers, NSPCC Merseyside, NSPCC

Seminar Room 4

Following its successful presentation at the IFSW European Conference in Prague, this workshop takes you on a journey through time. Come and join Ruth in the ‘TARDIS’.

Where and how will you be working over the next 5, 10, 20 years? You are invited to come on a journey of exploration into the future, reflecting a little on what we have done and what we are doing now, what we can together in the future; learning from our connectedness with others in our global profession, to achieve our vision when we came into social work – ‘to make a difference’.

Rediscover the soul of social work and be part of co-designing and co-building a paradigm shift in how we work for a better, sustainable world where no-one is left behind.  

Ruth Stark, Safeguarder, Independent Social Worker, former Global President, IFSW

Social Work Cinema

Join The Caring View as they discuss how to recognise and respond to abuse, the importance of having clear policies and procedures, how to identify and assess risks to children and vulnerable adults and how to remain compliant when sharing personal data when whistleblowing.

The Caring View

Seminar Room 3

Complex people have complex life experiences - practitioners need to understand what has happened. In fact they can probably make a guess that they have experienced some relational trauma as a young person.

Rock Pool promotes trauma-informed practice as the most effective way to work with any individual who has experienced trauma. Trauma-informed practice requires practitioners to assume everybody has experienced trauma of some degree, and services and interactions should be designed to avoid re-traumatising individuals.

Using the principle of trauma informed working can help both the client and the professional, but using a trauma informed lens doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in trauma therapy.

Join Sue and discuss the challenges involved when working with people with complex needs, such as the underfunding and under-resourcing of services and how to avoid a culture of ‘othering’ people in how professionals talk about them. Practitioners will also discuss ‘silo working’  - such as between community intervention, early intervention, crisis teams, specialist agencies (DATTA), etc - and how this can develop a disconnect between how we want to help and how we protect ourselves.

Sue Penna, CEO, Rock Pool Life CIC

Seminar Room 2

KIDS is a documentary series following young people in the care system which aired earlier this year on Channel 4.

The show invites the audience into the world of six care-experienced young people in Coventry to reveal the unflinching reality of how they entered care and how those experiences have shaped their journey.

Find out from social workers and others involved in the show what it was like to have their practice on show, and the impact the making of the series had on the young people involved, for the whole world to see. 

Matt Clayton, Strategic Lead - Looked After Children, Coventry City Council

Seminar Room 1

As family law professionals, the language we use impacts everything we do. From the relationships we have with our peers and colleagues to how a client understands the advice we give and the legal options available to them. Language also has a much wider impact: complex technical language in Court can make people feel alienated; inaccurate language in the media can mislead people about their rights; and language, in any context, which promotes conflict or reinforces the idea that family 

law means is adversarial can be damaging to everyone. Language matters. 

This workshop will consider the importance and impact of language in family law and how this can be improved. It will explore ways to improve your own use of language and understand what tools are available to help clients and others improve how they communicate to reduce conflict. OurFamilyWizard aims to be the bridge in communication. It puts an emphasis on dates, times, and facts through its features on one platform so that important issues surrounding the child(ren) do not get lost, confused or become delayed in getting resolved. Their Tonemeter encourages users to consider how their choice of language will be perceived by another party adding an additional level of conscience in communication. 

The workshop will be interactive, informative and will provide an opportunity to get involved in discussion & debate.

Tara Dunne is the Legal Associate at OurFamilyWizard. She graduated from the University of Exeter having obtained Bachelor of Laws with Honours in Law. Tara went on to receive an Outstanding in the Barrister Training Course before obtaining the role as a Paralegal in a Family Law firm in London where she managed a consistently busy caseload autonomously, with a focus on complex private law children matters. To broaden her advocacy experience, Tara became a County Court Advocate, 

presenting oral submissions in court on a range of Civil Law matters.

Tara is delighted to have returned to the Family Law arena, travelling the country to attend and speak at family law conferences, workshops and seminars to inform on how both parents and Family Law Professionals can benefit from the platform and help parents with their communication. Tara works with Courts, Chambers, Firms, CAFCASS, Mediators, Organisations and Charities to help parents with their communication.

Tara Dunne, Legal Associate, OurFamilyWizard

Seminar Room 6

Join this exclusive launch of the findings from the Social Workers Union/Bath Spa University research team research on social work supervision. 

Reflective supervision is a key component of social work practice. It aims to support social worker wellbeing, social worker practice, and ultimately improves outcomes for those who access social work services. However, there is very little agreement on what good reflective supervision practice looks like, why it is conducted, and the impacts of good reflective supervision on outcomes both for social workers and service users. This talk will outline the findings of a joint project between Bath Spa University and the Social Workers Union which started with a deep dive into the literature around reflective supervision, and then a series of individual interviews with social workers from across the UK into what good reflective practice looks like, how it should be conducted, and why it may be meaningful for service users.

John McGowan, General Secretary, Social Workers Union, Social Workers Union and Bath Spa University

Seminar Room 5

Independent social work is a real, viable and valid alternative to practicing as a social worker. Just like colleagues within local government or other similar organisational settings, you can deliver a tangible, visible and quantifiable impact on the lives of those you choose to serve.

Find out more about setting up as an independent and growing your practice with a richly rewarding, fulfilling, and thriving career transforming lives.

Joe Z Mairura, Independent Social Worker, Imara Development Practices

Seminar Room 3

David Lockwood, Senior Business Development Manager from Finders International and former Local Authority Deputy will speak about the problems Social Care staff face when a client passes away and has no known next of kin to deal with their funeral and estate. What should a Social Worker do, who can they turn to for help?

David will present case studies and highlight the actions taken to find family and deal with their funeral. He will look at how Finders International, the UK’s largest Probate Genealogy Company, can assist finding family even in cases where there isn’t an estate. His presentation examines the law and the complications that can arise.

David Lockwood, Senior Business Development Manager, Finders International

Social Work Cinema

In this ‘in conversation with,’ Alex Ruck-Keene talks to Siddiq Diwan, Imam and Lead Muslim Chaplain at the Manchester University Hospital Foundation Trust  (and Vice Director of the Ethics Council at The British Islamic Medical Association).  He learns something of the Islamic perspective on the concepts of capacity and best interests, and thinks with him about navigating some of the complexities of these issues in the medical treatment context.

Mental Capacity Law and Policy

Seminar Room 1

Through Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART™), children and mothers can talk to each other about domestic abuse, learn to communicate and rebuild their relationship. The service, which has been recognised by the Home Office, also provides children and mothers with an opportunity to meet others who have lived through similar experiences.

Over ten weeks, mothers and children aged 7-14 meet for a weekly two-hour group session. Children and mothers work together for an hour at the start of the group, and then take part in activities in separate groups. At the end of each session, they join together again. Women learn more about how domestic abuse happens and how it affects children while exploring experiences and strategies that can be used as a parent.

Join this session to find out more about this unique service and how you can apply learning to your own practice.

Anthony Kelly; and Chris Dunn, Team Managers, NSPCC Merseyside

Seminar Room 6

The Court of Protection is often referred to as a “secret” court, yet this is not actually true. Instead, the Court handles matters regarding the most vulnerable members of society, which of course requires a certain level of privacy. For many individuals however, it is often the case that they have never heard of or interacted with the Court until they are forced to. Through this talk, Hugh Jones Solicitors aims to provide Social Workers with a clear and precise explanation as to what the Court of Protection is, what powers it has and when it should be considered as relevant to Service Users within individual Local Authorities, so that they may better understand the solutions often available to Service Users, via Property and Affairs Deputyship. 

Hugh Jones Solicitors

Seminar Room 2

This WiSP (Writing in Social Work Practice) project undertaken by colleagues at The Open University seeks to understand the role and nature of writing in everyday practice as part of communication more generally and to understand how the use of different technologies (paper, pen, screen, phone) are used and are impacting, in particular, on professional practice.

Some of the resources that are freely available to practitioners online will be explored, as well as considering how they can be embedded within social work teams to provide ongoing access to free, high quality CPD. The session will be of interest to any social workers who want to improve their writing, whether for assessments, reports or even case recordings.

Join Lindsay to find out more about the project and how it can improve your writing as a social worker.

Lindsay Giddings, Lecturer in Social Work and the Programme Lead for Undergraduate and Apprenticeship Social Work, The Open University

Social Work Cinema

This webinar presents findings from our research paper published in the British Journal of social work. The research considers how to provide welfare responses to children involved in serious violence and criminal exploitation. The paper presents a framework of five conditions that support welfare approaches and those that undermine it.

Join us at 4pm for a free wine reception and celebration of social work to meet colleagues and exhibitors from The Social Work Show and discuss the day's learning and opportunities.