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Important Dates

Conference Opens Monday 2 August 2010
Conference Closes Thursday 4 August 2010

Deadline for Receipt of Abstracts Friday 23 April 2010 
Authors Notified of Acceptance late May 2010 
Early Bird Registration deadline Wednesday 2 June 2010 

Expression of Interest

If you are interested in attending the Association of Children's Welfare Agencies Conference 2010 and would like further information, please complete the form below.

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Biography

Professor Robbie Gilligan is Head of the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He is also Associate Director (and co-founder) of the Children's Research Centre and co-ordinator (and founder) of the MSc in Child Protection and Welfare at Trinity College. He has served as a youth worker, social worker, foster carer and board member of various social service organisations. Professionally, his policy and practice focus is in the field of child and family welfare. He has a particular interest in the application of resilience and strength – based perspectives in work with children and families experiencing adversity. This interest in resilience also informs his research and publications. His most recent book is Promoting Resilience — Supporting children and young people who are in care, adopted or in need, the second edition of which has recently been published by British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (2009).

He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals, Child and Family Social Work (Wiley-Blackwell), Child Indicators Research – The Journal of the International Society of Child Indicators (Springer) and European Journal of Social Work (Routledge), and of the advisory boards of the journals Adoption and Fostering and Children and Society.

He has recently been elected President of Childwatch International Research Network, having served as an elected board member since 2002, and Vice – President in the period 2005-2009.

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

Responding to Vulnerable Children, Young People and their Families: nurturing capacity, promoting resilience, building supportive environments

Supporting vulnerable children, young people and their families is a complex and hugely important challenge at the level of front line practice and wider policy.

The paper will explore a range of evidence, wisdom and values that can help to inform efforts to build supportive environments for children and young people facing adversity. Special attention will be given to the particular issues facing the vulnerable minority of children and young people in out of home care. While young people and families clearly need access to good education, health care, housing and income, the paper will argue that supportive environments also arise, to a significant extent, from a web of supportive relationships. These may lie waiting to be tapped into and woven by young people, families and their informal networks. In this vision, the renewed task of professionals is to help stimulate and sustain long term supportive resources available to vulnerable children, young people and families.

Biography

Ian Sinclair holds a PhD from London School of Economics. From 1977 to 1989 Ian was director of research at the National Institute of Social work. He was appointed Professor of Social Work at University of York in 1989. In 1996 he became co-director of the Social Work Research and Development Unit at the same university. He is currently with the Social Policy Research Unit where he has an ‘honorary’ position as an emeritus Professor.

Ian’s earlier work was in the fields of delinquency, adult relationships, and the welfare of old people. More recently he has published on residential care and foster care for children. His latest study dealt with stability and movement in the care system. His views are also influenced by his wife’s experience as a trained social worker in residential work and her activities in providing lodgings and support to homeless adults and young people.

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

What Makes For Success in Care
Quality, Organisation, and Short and Long-term Success

This paper draws on four studies carried out at widely spaced intervals over a period of forty years. These studies addressed three questions:

• Can residential or foster care help a child to change and if so, which children do they help, in what respects, and how?
• Do any changes outlast time in placement?
• Can organisations enable improvements that last?

I will expand on findings to argue that:

• Both foster placements and residential placements work ‘best’ when carers are warm and have clear, agreed expectations
• Some carers are better than others but their ability to offer firmness and warmth also reflect the ‘fit’ between the placement and child and benign or malign ‘cycles’
• Placement quality affects ‘immediate well-being’ but probably not personality: subsequent well-being is determined by subsequent placement
• Organisations wishing to affect well-being have to do so largely through their ability to affect the quality of placements.

All this suggests that organisations must focus on selecting and keeping high quality placements, developing effective training and support , and above all, working to ensure that the progress made by children in care is supported by what comes next.

Biography

Aron Shlonsky is associate professor and Factor-Inwentash Chair in Child Welfare at the University of Toronto, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, the director of the Bell Canada Child Welfare Research Unit, and Co-Director of the Canadian Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare.  Prior to his appointment at University of Toronto, he spent a number of years as a child protective services worker, sexual abuse therapist, and substance abuse counselor in Los Angeles.  His professional interests center largely on child welfare and include risk assessment, kinship foster care, and sibling relationships in out-of-home care.  He also has an abiding interest in evidence-based practice and evaluation research.  He is co-author of ‘Child Welfare Research: Advances for Child Welfare Practice and Policy’ (2008, Oxford University Press) and has authored and co-authored numerous manuscripts appearing in scholarly journals and books highlighting the use of actuarial tools in child welfare settings, the predictors and effects of sibling separation in foster care, issues surrounding kinship foster care, the implementation of subsidized legal guardianship for relative caregivers, and the teaching and implementation of evidence-based practice. 

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

Assessment in child welfare involves at least two distinct processes: an assessment of risk (prediction of future harm) and a clinical or contextual assessment of child and family functioning used to develop case plans. Both types of assessment are critical decision aids, yet there has been confusion in the field about their respective uses. Statisically-driven risk assessment instruments clearly have the greatest potential to reliably and accurately estimate the recurrence of child maltreatment and any other number of outcomes. Absent better advances in dynamic risk assessment instruments (which purport to serve both masters but, to date, have poor statistical properties), however, statistically-driven tools do not indicate which clinical factors are most important to address and neither type of assessment indicate which services are most likely to be effective. Social care workers and agencies must translate information from both forms of assessment into the choice of a set of effective service interventions. One of the keys to better decisions is to reliably and thoughtfully integrate information from clinical and predictive sources of information, and the pathway to better integration may be found in approaches that encourage a critical thinking perspective. This framework can easily fit into the broader evidence-informed practice movement, which may be the next step in the evolution of child protective services.

Biography

Robyn is Professor of Social Work and Director of the Practice Research and Professional Development Hub, School of Health and Social Services, Massey University, New Zealand. She has qualifications in social work, disability studies and sociology and is the co-leader of a project researching young people’s pathways to resilience and a longitudinal project researching the transitions made by young people focusing on their work, education and life projects. Both projects are funded by the government agency, Foundation for Research Science and Technology. Robyn has extensive experience in disability and family research including research on family wellbeing using participatory and action research methodologies and has published internationally on this research. She has recently completed an action research project that explored social and community practice in community-based settings and strategies for building inclusive communities to support families and children. Robyn has published widely on social and community work theory and practice including strengths-based practice, disability studies; community development, bicultural practice and indigenous approaches; research methods and research ethics; children and young people; and, family wellbeing.

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

Building inclusive communities for families and children

This presentation focuses on how to effectively support vulnerable families by building inclusive communities that enhance family wellbeing and also extend opportunities for the participation of families in community life. It explores innovative approaches to building nurturing and inclusive communities including how to respond to the diverse needs of families and children. A key focus is the utilisation of strengths-based and indigenous approaches combined with community development strategies to explore how positive change strategies for enhancing family and child wellbeing can be promoted. Of particular interest is the way in which collaborative practice between families and practitioners can be developed. Establishing authentic and respectful relationships with families can generate new ideas about family change and provide a stronger foundation for assisting families to engage in change. Central to this is developing an understanding of how change processes evolve over time and learning how practitioners can connect with the natural support networks of families and use these as a platform for change. Also of significance is the consideration that should be given to cultural protocols and how these inform work with families and make a major contribution to enhancing family wellbeing over time and across generations. Utilising cultural frameworks in change processes is connected with strategies for exploring strengths. A preoccupation with identifying risk factors can be at the expense of understanding the complexity of family life and can overlook the processes that will assist families to find solutions. The paper identifies how practitioners can assist families to identify their strengths so that they develop and sustain their capacity to care. Such approaches enable practitioners to develop alternative perspectives on family life that provide them with different and more effective strategies for enhancing the wellbeing of families and children.

Biography

Marian Brandon is a Reader in Social Work at the University of East Anglia and Director of Post Qualifying Programmes. Before joining the University she worked for ten years as a social worker in both residential and fieldwork settings. Her research activity focuses on child maltreatment, family support and inter-agency working. Recently Marian has been directing analyses of the most serious cases of child abuse and child fatality through abuse or neglect, for the English and Welsh Government. She has carried out a longitudinal study of maltreated children and led the national evaluation of two Common Assessment Frameworks (for England and for Wales) which were designed to promote more effective early support for children and their families. Both the family support and the child maltreatment studies provide critical appraisal of policy, practice and decision making and have influenced national policy and government guidance.

Marian has also conducted studies of intensive family preservation services and a cross national study (with colleagues from Australia) of community based centres. She is a founding member of the International Association for Outcome Based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children’s Services

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

Child protection, family support and multi-agency working

Family support and early intervention have considerable benefits for children which can endure into adulthood. Effective family support delivered at an early stage can foster child and family well being, can help to prevent child neglect and maltreatment, and can curb child fatality from abuse. There are however a number of tensions and challenges in family support policy and practice. These include: balancing support to families with the protection of children; the battleground over thresholds within and between services and in multi-agency working; keeping children safe in families with parental mental ill health, domestic abuse and parental substance misuse; working with family hostility;  the struggle to provide services to hard to reach groups; and  ‘hard to help’ adolescents.  Evidence will be drawn from studies of family support and serious child maltreatment to consider these challenges and to argue why and how protecting children and supporting families should and can be combined.  Factors which facilitate and hinder effective family support and multi-agency working will be considered alongside different patterns of practice, for example, with child neglect.  A positive practice cycle will be offered which encourages more critical, systematic thinking, which can lead to safer, more compassionate, multi-agency practice.

Biography

Deborah Ghate is the Director of the Centre for Effective Services. CES was established in 2008 in Ireland and Northern Ireland to promote and support the application of evidence-informed policy and practice by connecting the design and delivery of services with scientific and technical knowledge about what works. The Centre is independent and not for profit, and is funded by a partnership of government and philanthropy. It works to promote better outcomes for children, families and communities across the island of Ireland by providing tailored technical assistance to service -providing organisations, and by supporting policy makers and practitioners to use and apply evidence in their work. Previously, Deborah was the director of the Policy Research Bureau in London, a leading independent research centre where she led a number of national studies that have been influential in contributing to policy and practice both in the UK and Europe more widely.

Synopsis of Keynote Abstract

Supporting parents in the poorest communities: practice challenges and policy solutions

Research suggests that many parents – not just those who live in poverty - wish for more help than they actually get at some point in their parenting career. However, it is particularly important to support parents in the most disadvantaged environments, because although most manage admirably, the evidence is that risk factors at individual, family and community levels are abundantly present in disadvantaged communities and that these combine cumulatively to undermine parental coping in serious ways. The research shows that poorer the area, the greater the prevalence of risk factors and the less likely parents are to feel that they are coping.

This talk will give an overview of what we know works best to support parents, based on evidence from the international literature as well as findings from a large national study of 1,750 parents in the poorest neighbourhoods in Great Britain. It will suggest some ways that we can best target our efforts when developing and designing services, in order to be maximally effective for reaching parents and children in poverty.

Deborah Ghate is the Director of the Centre for Effective Services. CES was established in 2008 in Ireland and Northern Ireland to promote and support the application of evidence-informed policy and practice by connecting the design and delivery of services with scientific and technical knowledge about what works. The Centre is independent and not for profit, and is funded by a partnership of government and philanthropy. It works to promote better outcomes for children, families and communities across the island of Ireland by providing tailored technical assistance to service -providing organisations, and by supporting policy makers and practitioners to use and apply evidence in their work. Previously, Deborah was the director of the Policy Research Bureau in London, a leading independent research centre where she led a number of national studies that have been influential in contributing to policy and practice both in the UK and Europe more widely.

Linda Burney was elected Member for Canterbury in 2003. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Training in 2005 and joined Cabinet as Minister for Fair Trading, Youth and Volunteering in 2007. 

In September 2008 she was promoted to Minister for Community Services and in December 2009 she was appointed Minister for the State Plan. She is also the Coordinating Minister for the Department of Human Services: the umbrella agency for the portfolios of community services, housing, ageing, disability and home care, juvenile justice and Aboriginal Affairs. 

Linda is the first Aboriginal Australian to be elected to the NSW Parliament and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation. Her commitment to Indigenous issues spans 30 years. 

She began her career as a teacher in Western Sydney and spent many years working in education. In 2002 her expertise was formally recognised when she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Education from Charles Sturt University. Linda was the first Aboriginal graduate of this respected institution. 

Linda has held senior leadership positions in the non-government sector; she has served on a number of boards including SBS, the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board and the NSW Board of Studies. Linda was also an executive member of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, President of the NSW Aboriginal Consultative Group and is a former Director-General of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs. 

Linda has represented Australia at various United nations forums. 

As a member of the Keneally Government’s Cabinet she continues to be a passionate advocate for social justice and as Minister for the State Plan, she is a key driver of improvements in the delivery of public services. 

In the Community services portfolio her primary concern is the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children. Linda took over the Community Services portfolio prior to Justice Wood handing down his report following the Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services. She is leading whole of government reform of child protection in response to Justice Wood's recommendations through the five year-plan Keep Them Safe. 

Linda was President of the Australian Labor Party in 2008.

Professor Patrick McGorry is a leading international researcher, clinician and advocate for the youth mental health reform agenda. He is Executive Director of Orygen Youth Health (OYH), a world-renowned mental health organisation for young people that has put Australia at the forefront of innovation in the prevention and treatment of mental illness. OYH targets the needs of young people with emerging serious mental illness, including first-episode psychosis and has become the model upon which many other youth mental health services in the world are based.

Professor McGorry is also a founding board member of headspace, the National Youth Mental Health Foundation. He believes that early intervention offers the greatest hope for recovery and therefore takes every opportunity to educate the community to recognise the early signs of mental illness, without stigmatising or discriminating. His extraordinary 27-year contribution to the improvement of the youth mental health sector has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of young people the world over.

Dorothy Scott is the Foundation Chair in Child Protection and the Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia. Before taking up this appointment in 2005 she was the Head of the School of Social Work at the University of Melbourne, and prior to that, the Executive Director of The Ian Potter Foundation, one of Australia’s largest philanthropic trusts. Dorothy’s career in child welfare began when she was a seventeen year old child care worker at the Allambie Reception Centre in Burwood, Victoria. Moved by the suffering of children who were admitted to State care, she studied social work at the University of Melbourne in the early 1970s and then worked for the then Social Welfare Department in the area of foster care and adoption. She then worked in the field of mental health, becoming Senior Social Worker in the Family Psychiatry Department of the Queen Victoria Medical Centre in Melbourne. There she helped establish specialist services for women experiencing post-partum psychiatric disorders, and services for women and children who had been sexually assaulted. In the 1980s she began an academic career, lecturing social work students at the University of Melbourne, and conducting research in areas including maternal depression and child welfare. Since then she has conducted numerous reviews and inquiries in Australia in the field of child protection and served on Ministerial advisory bodies in several States and Territories.