An online event produced by staff at the London Borough of Camden will explore ways in which the local authority have tried to change the way it views child and family engagement with social services.
The Eventbrite page description says the online conference is family led, and will include “discussion circles” with local authorities who the organisers say are attempting to work with families and children rather than dominate them.
The background to the event is added below:
“Join colleagues from the London Borough of Camden (LBC) for a reflective morning exploring ways in which local authorities are surfacing and repositioning power of children and families in social work and family support practice, and how it’s helping children and families to flourish.
What is surfacing power? Put simply, it asks us to re-imagine how we think about power. It acknowledges that children, families and communities have power already and that the way we think, feel and act in children’s services can lift that power to the surface.
Co-led by family members, this event will explore examples of Camden projects that have helped us to re-imagine sharing and surfacing power with children, families and their communities. There will be discussion circles with a range of local authorities sharing their experiences of doing this vital repositioning work.
Workshops will give opportunity to dive deeper into the practice of surfacing power of children and families, explore the challenges and opportunities, and where this approach might go into the future.
Programme will include:
Co-design – Family Change Makers project; repositioning power by children and families taking the lead in service design
Systemic and Ecological Approaches – Right Balance project and Camden Model of Social Work; repositioning power by working alongside children and their families doing with and not to
Participation – Camden Conversations; repositioning power by empowering parents and young people to influence the child protection process
Family in the lead – 20 years of Camden Family Group Conference and families and communities leading their own solutions
Workshops to explore “In thinking about adopting the distributed leadership/surfacing power principle…..”
What works well /worked well in this idea of repositioning power and distributed leadership?
What are the challenges/gets in the way of distributed leadership/surfacing or repositioning power?
Examples of other projects/ways of thinking, being, feeling and working – what and how can we learn from each other to share practice?
An opportunity to share practice, problem solve, network and leave with inspiration.”
The event was shared on 16th October on Twitter by Becca Dove, a family worker and the head of family help at LBC.
The details for the conference do not mention whether social services experienced children and families are welcome, but as always if you would like to attend and find you have been turned down after registering for a ticket, let us know and we will look into this for you.
The seminar takes place on Friday 3rd December, from 9.30am to 12.30pm (GMT).
You can register for the event here.
Researching Reform 
The “family led ” conference might like to consider the ITV video below when “helping children and families to flourish”
Click on this link to watch the fabulous ITV documentary “exposure” and please share it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1N9r2Vieg A mother screams in agony as her newborn baby is ripped from her arms……….
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the producer [edited] phoned me to let me know about the censorship from the law society tv legal team. they had to edit out all the facts and replace it with a voiceover about how the family needed “too much support”, if they refused to censor, the program wouldn’t be aired, and they wouldn’t be paid. but the real reason why all of our children over the years were kidnapped and forcibly adopted was mentioned here in parliament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY2LQMa66rU also the mention of how they attempted to imprison me for speaking out, and all the human right abuses. but there is no law society legal team in the country willing or able to take on the case. they all say “you must talk with the law society so they can decide how a case should proceed”. i had a judgment allowing me to talk about, and name all the people involved in the cases, but i mustn’t identify a child. so why all the censorship? it could blow the whole system apart, and all the criminals lurking within would be exposed.
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Hi, I seen you in the Exposure programe back in 2014. it was heart renching to see how they broke into your house and stole your baby. we know what that pain is like after losing our three children back in Nov 2014. the youngest being on 10 mths old. we we cut off and have not seen the youngest two for over 6 yrs. the carer and the SS are against us so its virtually impossible to make any progress. so sorry to hear about your story. have you ever seen your baby since ?
you can send me a FB request if you like. best wishes.
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This is a very good TV exposure of the SS and family courts. it also features MP for Telford Lucy Allan who almost lost her son to the SS when they tried to have her classified as mentally unstable via a So-called Expert witness who rote a full report that condemned her even though he had never even spoken to her. clearly the Expert was writing what the SS wanted him to write. just like they did to us. the corruption is widespread.
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“Family Led” – “Repositioning power” … Oh dear … We used to see all sorts of mind play and games with “Users of services” in Mental Health systems which were supposed to re-frame “power” .. I was an Independent Monitor then (pro bono)..
All sorts of events “User led” and “User this and that” and it all resulted finally in the system driving policy with groups of looked after “chosen” Users rubber stamping stuff or tweaking service designs which were always top down ..
The only way to “re-frame power” in family terms is to front-line money and support right at the problem end . “At the need for therapy end”. You know the way they do with that wretched Adoption Support Fund which invests directly in Adopters gaining skills while money was siphoned away from Early Intervention in Birth Family Crisis..
What a con … It happens though … New circuses of tricks always do and the people that mainly benefit are Service Staff as usual .. What wretched mystification ..
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