New series of Practice Seminars during March

Members, check your emails! We’ve just sent out your email invitations to our new series of Practice Seminars, taking place during March.

This new series of Seminars will provide invaluable professional development learning around key, current topics and challenges experienced by residential childcare professionals. Registration is FREE for all CHA members.

13th March 2024 (2-4pm): The Rise of Deprivation of Liberty Orders (DOLO) with Lisa Harker (Director of Nuffield FJO)

Recent work by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (FJO) has identified a 462 per cent increase in DoL orders in the three years up to 2020/21, and a total of 1,249 children were subject to an order in the 12 months up to July 2023. Placing a child who is subject to a DOLO is extremely difficult, but there are often misunderstandings about accepting a child subject to an order, leading to children who desperately need a placement in a regulated children’s home not receiving one. This is a key area of work for CHA, and we are pleased to have Lisa Harker from Nuffield FJO present at this seminar to help provide a deeper understanding of what we know about these children and what more we can do. 

20th March 2024: Child Sexual Abuse, Exploitation and the Influence of the Digital World with Libby Flenley (founder of the Sex, Lies & Love Project)

This seminar features guest speaker Libby Flenley, founder of the Sex, Lies and Love project. The project aims to equip children and young people with the necessary knowledge and understanding to navigate the complex world of relationships. The seminar will provide members with expert guidance on how to equip children with the knowledge to lead safer and healthier lives.  Attendees will learn how to provide children with an in-depth understanding of consent and the harmful effects of online material, including its influence on criminal and sexual violence, as well as body image, and mental health.

27th March 2024: Drugs, Facts and Fallacies with Professor Caroline Chatwin

The use of substances is a frequent issue to address for children’s home staff. It is also a controversial and much debated topic, but one where evidence is often cast aside by rhetoric, mistaken beliefs and inconsistent government policy. This seminar aims to provide balanced evidence based information on substances, highlighting the importance of ‘harm reduction’ in service providers’ response to drug use and outlining some of the inconsistencies and inequalities in terms of how different groups of substance users are treated. Caroline is a criminologist working in the Kent Criminology Group. Her research interests include: global drug policy, new psychoactive substances, internet drug markets and the experience of imprisonment. She teaches level 6 optional modules on illegal drugs and the prison system.

If you don’t receive your email invitation to register, please email admin@the-cha.org.uk or call the office on 01325 370584.