February 2019

An evening seminar was held at Somerset House on Working with Gang Culture. The discussions were led by Sherrylyn Peck, CEO of Safer London; Anthony Gunter, Principal Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of East London and Andrew Whittaker, Associate Professor, School of Health and Social Care, London South Bank University. The seminar began by considering the concept of 'gang' and the extent to which it was useful in understanding the situations charted in the various research studies and official reports. The relationships between young people's behaviour, family backgrounds, education, health, culture, deprivation, environment, policing and public and me…
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December 2018

The December 18 seminar held at Buckfast Abbey comprised four presentations. The first was by Nick Axford from PenCLAHRC at the University of Plymouth who discussed the concept of early intervention and how thinking on this is changing in view of the findings from its application in a variety of settings. Heather Price from the University of East London and Mike Staines from the Mulberry Bush School then described new developments in researching therapeutic practice for severely traumatised children, drawing the outcomes from a series of projects undertaken at the school. Professor Martin Platt, director of PenCHORD, University of Exeter, explained the methods used by NICE to evaluate the …
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October 2018

The autumn seminar at King’s College, London discussed on The Role and Value of Reviews, Investigations and Inquiries in Order to Learn Lessons in the Field of Public Services. The contributors were Gillian Downham (mental health), Androulla Johnstone (NHS), Jill Manthorpe (adult care), James Blewett and Wendy Rose (children’s services). The seminar analysed the way the context in which reviews were undertaken had changed over the past decade and explored the inherent tensions between the different perspectives and expectations of their functions among the parties involved. It then considered the conditions auspicious for an effective review in terms of clarifying what happened, …
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July 2018

  A joint CSP/Child Care History Network seminar on Children’s Homes: what were they really like? Have they a future? was held at King’s College, London on July 17th. The seminar opened with Peter Higginbotham speaking about his recent book, Children’s Homes: A History of Institutional Care for Britain’s Young and Roger Bullock complemented this by reviewing what research has told us. A former resident then described his experience of living in residential care. In the afternoon sessions, David Lane drew out the lessons from the Northern Ireland Inquiry into historical abuse in residential care and to conclude the proceedings Professor Ray Jones discussed the pol…
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June 2018

The summer seminar was held at the new Lab Offices, Buckfast Abbey on June 5th and 6th. Mary Anne McFarlane, CSP fellow and former Chief Probation Officer for Devon and Cornwall, described her work in setting up a programme to deal with with low-level young offenders in Romania. She discussed the theoretical, practical and cross-cultural issues that had to be addressed and the development process that led to the final design. Ross Hommel, Foundation Professor of Criminology at Griffith University, Queensland, then discussed his plans for setting up a national centre for prevention science infrastructure in Australia (see CSP website papers). The next day, Caroline Davis from Families for Chi…
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March 2018

The March 2018 seminar was held at Dartington Hall. There were presentations by Josh MacAlister, CEO of Frontline, the social work training programme which offers graduates a speedier entry to the profession, David Gordon from Bristol University who talked about current concepts, measures and trends with regard to national and world poverty, and from Ben Hartridge who described the Design Lab's work with the housing charity CRISIS. Tim Hobbs, Director and CEO of the Dartington Service Design Lab, also laid out plans for the future of CSP. David Gordon's slides are available here.…
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December 2017

The December 2017 was held at the London School of Economics. Professor Ian Gough, SCP Fellow and Visiting Professor, Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE, London. His presentation discussed the relationship between climate change, capitalism and sustainable well-being. It was based on his recent book Heat, greed and Human Need, Elgar Publishing, 2017. Professor Gough outlined the ways that catastrophic global warming can be averted in an economic system that is greedy for growth without worsening deprivation and inequality. He argued that the satisfaction of human needs – as opposed to wants - is the only viable measure for negotiating trade-offs between climate change, ca…
/ Professor Ian Gough

November 2017

The November 2017 seminar included contributions from David Lane on the findings of the Northern Ireland Child Abuse Inquiry and the significance of such reviews for child care policy; Chris Hanvey on proposals for a new book, FracturedChildhood, fashionoing a comprehensive approach to meeting children's needs; Christine Bradley, John Whitwell and John Diamond on their new book Revealing the Inner World of the Traumatised Child and the relenace of therapeutic work in children's services today, and finally, Jean Harris-Hendriks discussing a paper by Mary Lindsay on Sick Children and their Parents - a history of the family contacts of children in hospital.…
/ David Lane

June 2017

June 2017 Contributions included:   Improving Mental Health Services in a Coastal Town   Tim Hobbs (Dartington Social Research Unit) Member(s) of South Devon and Torbay Mental Health Team.   Mental health services are facing huge difficulties everywhere but are under particular pressure in coastal towns. South Devon and Torbay is no exception. Despite the Riviera image of palm trees and golden sands, the availability of cheap accommodation and benign climate mean that there is a growing prevalence of mental health difficulties, emerging in childhood and becoming entrenched in adulthood.   The South Devon and Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are seeking innovative…
/ Tim Hobbs, Jonathan Dawson,Roger Bullock, Stephan Harding

March 2017

  MARCH 2017 SEMINAR Contributions included: Youth Homelessness Johanna Morrell An exploration of how and why it happens, how statutory services respond and what we can do to improve the experiences of young people who find themselves adrift. Johanna will draw from her experience of supporting homeless young people in Bristol in order to reflect on the severely negative impact of homelessness and society’s response to it, illustrated by observations from the young people themselves. Johanna left her job as a teacher in mainstream education in 1997 in order to work with young people facing multiple disadvantages.  Since that time she has developed and led multi-disciplinary te…
/ Johanna Morrell, Stephanie Guy, Ainé Rose Kelly, Andrea Warman

February 2017

The role of creative artists in modern society and ways they can address social issues. Central London: The distinguished poet  David Herd (Professor of English Literature at Kent University), and the famous TV/ Director Tony Garnett (who worked closely with Ken Loach) talked about the ways they have analysised serious issues via their artisitic work - David on assylum seekers and refugees and Tony in productions like  'Family Life' and 'Cathy Come Home'.…
/ David Herd and Tony Garnett

December 2016

CENTRE FOR SOCIAL POLICY EVENING SEMINAR Professor Larry Aber THURSDAY 15th DECEMBER 2016Violence and Children's Development: Personal, Historical and International Perspectives.   More detail is here.  …
/ Professor Larry Aber

November 2016

The November CSP meeting was held on the 15th/16th November at Dartington Hall. There were four presentations. Joyce Mosely talked about the status of 18-24 year olds and the way they fall between servivecs.She described several initiatives to remedy this problem. Finley Green then discussed his research into the values and aspirations of young Muslims in Tower Hamlets, looking especially at the extent to which they subscribed to British values. Paul Bywaters from Coventry University then presented findings from his studies concerning race of children in care across local authorities and highlighted the significance of policy variables, as opposed to soical deprivation factors. Finally, Brid…
/ Roger Bullock

October 2016

Pathways of Care for Young People in Secure Care A discussion led by Heidi Hales, Consultant Adolescent Forensic Psychiatrist, HMYOI, Cookham Wood and CNLW NHS Foundation Trust and Louise Warner, project director Fellows considered the results emerging from a major NHS-funded research project due for completion at the end of the year.…
/ Roger Bullock

June 2016

The June CSP meeting was held on the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th and the morning of Wednesday the 15th June 2016 at Lower Hood Barn, Dartington (offices of the Social Research Unit) with accommodation and evening meal at Dartington Hall. Contributions included: Bodies, Babies and Boundaries - Miranda Davies (Coram/BAAF, London)Getting it Right for Every Child - a co-ordinated framework to promote the well-being of children in Scotland - Jane Aldgate, Professor Emeritus University of Leicester and The Open University A model of alternative education provision for students pushed out of school - James Wetz, Chair of CSP and Co-Chair for the Consortium for Emotional Wellbeing in Schools …
/ Roger Bullock