The conference will explore how to:

• Recognise disguised compliance when engaging with families from diverse cultural backgrounds and faith communities
• Break down the language barriers to avoid collusion with interpreters
• Accept families’ cultural differences within the framework of the law

As well as sponsoring and exhibiting at the event, Sarah will be presenting a creative and interactive workshop entitled ‘Exploring the journey for families to understand acceptable disciplinary methods’. The workshop will focus on the following:

• Recognising what constitutes abuse
• Families and practitioners journeys on working together in changing views on what constitutes abuse
• Practical and useful approaches for practice

To find out more about the conference, please take a look at the brochure: Working with BME and Faith Communities 2012

If you are interested in booking on the conference then please use the link provided - http://ow.ly/aHnpd

Over the past five years the award-winning organisation, which offers a complete range of training and consultancy services for the safeguarding of children and young people, has worked with organisations across the UK including care providers, charities, schools and local authorities.

Founded by Sarah Goodall in 2007 the company has trained more than 4,000 individuals and demand for Athena’s services continues to grow.

Sarah commented: “We’re all thrilled to be celebrating five years in business. Safeguarding is an important subject that can affect many people in our communities. Organisations are realising that it is a shared responsibility and if not dealt with appropriately, could have serious consequences.“

The Athena Programme secured premises and established a website with support and funding from Rosebud, which is provided by Lancashire County Developments Ltd (LCDL) – the county council’s economic development company – as part of the council’s broad package of investment and advice.

Sue Roberts, LCDL’s project officer for business growth and innovation, said: “We’re delighted that Athena has been able to grow and develop thanks to the support and funding from Rosebud.”

For more about help from Rosebud, visit www.lancashire.gov.uk and search under “rosebud”.

For more information visit:

http://www.clitheroeadvertiser.co.uk/news/business-news/clitheroe-business-celebrates-fifth-anniversary-1-4474792#

Sarah Goodall runs The Athena Programme, which delivers training and consultancy to organisations nationwide aimed at safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

Her plans to study for a PhD will see her return to Lancaster University, where she studied social work at the Department of Applied Social Science from 1994 to 1997.

She said she was looking forward to returning to study after her career first as a social worker and company managing director.

“I can’t wait – I’m passionate about the subject and fuelled with excitement. My time at Lancaster was brilliant and I know how supportive the staff  are.  Lancaster has given me the best grounding that I could have and set me up for a very good career. I absolutely love studying and I can’t wait to challenge my brain.”

Sarah will continue to run The Athena Programme while doing the full-time PhD, which will research how new technologies can be incorporated into the current children protection system.

“This PhD is very complementary to my business and will fundamentally affect practice so it’s an important part of my business strategy. My new research aims to find out any benefits so we can share these with the organisations that Athena works with.”

The Athena Programme was set up in 2007 and now has five employees and five training associates. Over 4,000 people have since been trained on safeguarding, which translates into around 40,000 children who have potentially benefited.

Sarah’s success earned her the Business Start-up of the Year award at the North West Women in Business Awards and national recognition at the annual Extraordinary Women of the Year Awards 2011.

She has been awarded funding for her PhD from the Economic and Social Research Council’s North West Doctoral Training Centre, which is the largest centre in England for social science postgraduate training.

Sarah’s PhD will connect with a programme of research led by Professor Corinne May-Chahal, with Professor Awais Rashid from InfoLab21 focused on software engineering research for child protection and community safety.

Professor May-Chahal said: “We are excited by the potential to broaden our research programme both by developing Sarah’s commitment to creativity and arts in safeguarding and also knowledge exchange with a range of employers across the country.”

For more information visit:

http://news.lancs.ac.uk/Web/News/Pages/Postgraduate-study-will-improve-my-business-says-entrepreneur-.aspx

The Preston Social held its first event at the new location of the Forum on Winckley Street on Tuesday, with the topic focused around debating the contentious idea of responsibilities and rights surrounding young people online.

Attendees heard from Duncan Hodgson, who develops applications for young people through his work with Plings and rubothered.co.uk, which he designed, developed and has maintained since its origin. The site was recently shortlisted for Best Website of the Radio Wave Culture & Lifestyle Awards.

Duncan summed up his mentality by saying “if your children saw a swimming pool, you wouldn’t build a wall around it, you’d teach them to swim”. He emphasised the importance of consulting with and educating children about the web from a young age – making them feel part of it rather than setting up filters that blocked lots of sites that could be beneficial to them (Twitter, YouTube etc).

The second speaker of the evening was Sarah Goodall, who founded the Athena Programme in 2007 and has 21 years’ experience as a volunteer, social worker, probation officer and youth offending team manager.

Sarah is an expert in safeguarding young people, and her talk encompassed various strategies and methods that she has found to be successful in her own work across charities and local authorities.

After the speaking sessions had finished the floor was open for debate, and some tweets have been collected from the evening below.

It’s crazy how the speed of the Internet makes it so much more dangerous to everyone who just gives their info out #prestonsocial – MissAJBurton

People are not anonymous online, even if you think you are you’re not! Perhaps we need better analysis when things go wrong? #prestonsocial – phpcodemonkey

#prestonsocial how do we encourage developers to think about providing safeguard for children? – goalchasers

There’s a mindset and culture (fear?) of social media in many parents. Agree? #prestonsocial – tomstables

#prestonsocial feedback. Venue:good location,odd layout,slightly pricey but v nice food & drinks. @she_sider ate thishttp://t.co/T8mK0JEK – microwavedrama

Taken from blogpreston.co.uk/preston-social/

Improvements in safeguarding have been rapid and widespread in recent years, and nearly all schools now give an appropriately high priority to getting their safeguarding procedures right. In her commentary on the findings set out in Ofsted’s 2009/10 Annual Report, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector wrote:

‘Safeguarding…is an issue addressed not only with increasing sureness by those responsible for keeping children and learners safe, but one felt keenly by those most vulnerable to harm and neglect.’

Safeguarding remains high on Ofsted’s agenda and will continue to do so. The purpose of this good practice report is to identify the features of exceptionally good safeguarding.

The report ‘Safeguarding in schools: best practice’ distils the features of exceptionally good practice in safeguarding in schools where safeguarding was judged to be outstanding between September 2009 and July 2010.

Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Miriam Rosen said:

“There can be no issue of greater importance to parents and carers, or to schools, than the safety of their children.

“The good practice described in this report is replicable, with a sensible awareness of the local context, in every school. I hope schools can use this report as a practical working document to help them understand the features of good practice and to make improvements where required.”

In outstanding schools, pupils’ safeguarding is central to all that the schools do. These schools often go above and beyond the requirements which they do not see as a burden. Every member of the school community is involved in some way.

Key Features

Most of the features of outstanding practice are found, to a greater or lesser extent, in all effective schools with outstanding safeguarding arrangements. It is a wide-ranging list and includes:

• high-quality leadership and management that makes safeguarding a priority across all aspects of a school’s work
• stringent vetting procedures in place for staff and other adults
  
• rigorous safeguarding policies and procedures in place, written in plain English, compliant with statutory requirements and updated regularly; in particular, clear and coherent child protection policies
  
• child protection arrangements that are accessible to everyone, so that pupils and families, as well as adults in the school, know who they can talk to if they are worried
  
• excellent communication systems with up-to-date information that can be accessed and shared by those who need it
  
• a high priority given to training in safeguarding, generally going beyond basic requirements, extending expertise widely and building internal capacity
  
• robust arrangements for site security, understood and applied by staff and pupils
  
• a curriculum that is flexible, relevant and engages pupils’ interest; that is used to promote safeguarding, not least through teaching pupils how to stay safe, how to protect themselves from harm and how to take responsibility for their own and others’ safety
  
• courteous and responsible behaviour by the pupils, enabling everyone to feel secure and well-protected
  
• well thought out and workable day-to-day arrangements to protect and promote pupils’ health and safety
  
• rigorous monitoring of absence, with timely and appropriate follow-up, to ensure that pupils attend regularly
• risk assessment taken seriously and used to good effect in promoting safety

Weaknesses in safeguarding are usually related to failings in leadership, management and governance. In the small number of schools judged inadequate for issues solely related to safeguarding, the breaches were serious. Inspectors look at safeguarding early on in an inspection so that simple errors can be corrected before the end of the inspection.

As well as promoting best practice, the report sets out clearly how Ofsted inspects a school’s safeguarding procedures. The key word for both inspectors and schools is ‘reasonable’. The report aims to reassure schools that Ofsted makes judgements about safeguarding that are both fair and reasonable.

The report ‘Safeguarding in schools: best practice’ can be found on the Ofsted website at www.ofsted.gov.uk

Organised by the Local Government Group (LG Group), Association of Directors of Social Services (ADASS) and Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), this event is entitled ‘Tough times, good decisions’ and is vital to councillors, directors, senior officers, policymakers and service managers with responsibilities for education, children’s services and adult care in the statutory, voluntary and private sectors.

It is also an important opportunity for partners working in health, schools and related fields as well as MPs with an interest in social care, children’s services and education.

The programme will give many opportunities to hear keynote ministerial addresses and take part in plenary sessions. There will be a variety of participatory breakouts and networking sessions.

Regularly attended by more than 1,000 delegates, this conference is widely recognised as the most important annual event of its kind. This is your opportunity to hear the very latest thinking on key policy and improvement agendas, put your questions and comments to those involved in shaping them at the highest level, and network with your peers on the issues that matter to you locally.

Come along – share, engage, network and participate with your peers and leave informed, stimulated and motivated to develop and improve your offer to your communities.

For more information please go to www.ncasc.local.gov.uk

This strong theme is seen across policy areas in Graham Allen MP’s review of early intervention, the Munro review of child protection: ‘A child-centred system’, the public health reforms, and the SEN green paper and the schools white paper, as  it makes good sense for families and communities -  and for public finance.  However, we know that not all early intervention and prevention works, and getting it right is one of the most significant challenges that local authorities and partner agencies face.

This conference will explore the latest evidence about effective intervention and prevention in the early years, and for adolescents.  It will draw together learning about proven programmes and innovation in practice, looking at effective targeting and outreach work and at building resilience in families and children.  It features keynote sessions by two of the leading experts in this field, with panel discussions and workshops making the link between evidence and practice.

It may not be as simple as ‘getting it right first time’, but the outcome of this conference will be to enable investment of time and public money in the right support at the right time to really improve outcomes for children and young people .

This conference is a must for practitioners, senior and middle managers and policy makers from local authorities and agencies in all sectors working with families and children … from parents pre-birth to adolescents.

Sarah Goodall Facilitating Workshop 2

‘Safeguarding: Early Intervention with Care & Creativity’

An interactive workshop session will explore the crucial issue of early intervention in safeguarding children and young people.  Sarah will be facilitating a process for participants to reflect and connect with the true meaning of early intervention as evidenced based practice to increased positive outcomes for children and young people. Through the use of creativity and innovative techniques she will bring the experience of the journeys for practitioners and children/families of early intervention and child protection as two sides of the same coin to safeguarding practice. Her workshop will focus on taking a new and fresh approach to safeguarding in the wake of Eileen Munro’s review of Child Protection.

Other key note speakers include:

• Professor Jane Barlow – Professor of Public Health in the Early Years at the University of Warwick
• Professor Stephen Scott – Consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital
• Minna Daum – over 20 years experience as a Systemic Psychotherapist
• Dez Holmes – Director of Research in Practice
• Tony Newman – was Principal Research Officer with Barnardos since 1990
• Professor David Shemmings – Professor of Social Work at the University of Kent

To find out more information about the conference please go to www.baspcan.org.uk/events-national.php

To book your place on the conference on the 9th September 2011 please go to www.baspcan.org.uk/booking.php?event=10

Click here to view the video on YouTube.