LEMN SISSAY MBE is associate artist at Southbank Centre, patron of The Letterbox Club and The Reader Organisation, ambassador for The Children’s Reading Fund, trustee of Forward Arts Foundation and inaugural trustee of World Book Night and an honorary doctor of Letters. He has been a writer from birth and foremost he is a poet.

Lemn is author of a series of books of poetry alongside articles, records, broadcasts, public art, commissions and plays. Sissay was the first poet commissioned to write for London Olympics.  His Landmark Poems are installed throughout Manchester and London. They can be seen in The Royal Festival Hall and The Olympic Park. His Landmark Poem, Guilt of Cain, was unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu in Fen Court near Fenchurch St Station.

Sissay’s award winning play Something Dark directed by National Theatre of Wales artistic director John McGrath has been performed throughout the world  and his stage adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Novel Refugee Boy at West Yorkshire Playhouse toured Britain in 2014.  A BBC  TV documentary, Internal Flight, and a radio documentary, Child of the State, were both broadcast about his life and his Ted Talk has close to a million views.

 

PROFESSOR BECKY FRANCIS is Director of the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). Before this, she was Professor of Education and Social Justice at King’s College London. She has followed a research career focusing on education and social justice, incorporating education policy work, for example in her previous roles as Director of Education at the RSA, and as Standing Advisor to the Parliamentary Education Select Committee.

Becky is best known for her work on gender and achievement. Her policy research and analysis has focused particularly on school quality, and academies policy, in relation to social equality. Her academic expertise and extensive publications centre on social identities (gender, ‘race’ and social class) in educational contexts, social in/equality, and social identity and educational achievement, and gender theory. Becky was a member of the REF 2014 sub-panel for Education, and has acted as a judge for various practitioner awards panels, including the National Pupil Premium Awards and the TES Teacher of the Year awards. She is currently directing the Education Endowment Foundation-funded project ‘Best Practice in Grouping Students’, a mixed methods study involving 140 English secondary schools, investigating attainment and non-attainment grouping in relation to social inequality.

 

PROFESSOR CLAIRE CAMERON is Professor of Social Pedagogy at the Centre for Understanding of Social Pedagogy, Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, University College London. Claire began her career in residential care and, after qualifying as a social worker in 1987, in social work until 1992. Since then she has been a researcher specialising in studies of the children’s workforce, early childhood care and education, looked after children and young people, care leavers. She is particularly interested in the intersection of care and education and in the education of children in care and care leavers. Much of her work is cross-national and has a long standing interest in social pedagogy. She has been involved in studies of the potential for and impact of social pedagogy in the UK since 2000, and ran the Care Matters government funded pilot programme exploring social pedagogy in residential care. She developed and led the first UK MA Social Pedagogy and supervises PhD students in the field of social pedagogy. She co-edited (with Peter Moss) Social Pedagogy and Working with Children and Young People: Where Care and Education Meet  (2011, JKP), one of the first English language volumes introducing social pedagogy.  She is now project manager of the Scaling up Social Pedagogy project behind SPPA and the emergent social pedagogy qualifications.

 

AMANDA ORCHARD originally worked as a Teacher in the private sector, before becoming a project manager for the BBC and Innovation Manager for the Regional Development Agency in the West Midlands. She subsequently moved to Coventry University, working on a range of creativity/innovation projects linked to social care, women’s development and transnational creativity, and was seconded as a Professional Advisor to the EU on programme funding decisions.

For 5 years Amanda worked as CEO of a regional social care charity, developing charitable marketing, fundraising and adult social care and establishing an educational social enterprise for the charity, becoming its Managing Director.

Amanda has been Trustee with a number of national charities, working closely with the Charity Commission and as Company Secretary. Currently a Level 4 Foster Carer in Staffordshire, she supports the development of Foster Carer practice & skills, co-delivering training relating to Education of Looked After Children. She is a keen advocate for children’s self-expression and self-determination and was one of the initial Head, Heart, Hands carers.

Currently Amanda runs an education consultancy, where she is working to embed social pedagogy in UK education. She is a School Governor, and Vice-Chair of the Virtual School Governing Body in Staffordshire.

 

HELEN JONES OBE has a background in social work with children and families including the management of family placement services and policy development and implementation in local government services as well as social work teaching and training. She has worked for the Social Services Inspectorate and the Department for Education  (DFE) as a professional advisor developing and managing policy for children in care and children on the edge of care focusing on quality improvement in these services.

Helen has a particular interest in evidence-based interventions and understanding cost effectiveness and led a range of initiatives and programmes to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and ensure the effective implementation of change and a number of pieces of scoping and piloting work related to social pedagogy in England were commissioned by DfE, including a pilot in residential care. As part of international charity consultancy teams she has extensive experience of developing family based care in countries around the world.
Helen is now a national and international consultant on children’s services.

 

 

PROFESSOR PAT PETRIE is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Understanding Social Pedagogy (CUSP), Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University College London. She established CUSP in 2009. Her professional background is in teaching and drama and she has worked in residential settings with young offenders and young people labelled ‘socially maladjusted’.  Pat’s research career began in early childcare and education, play and care services for school-age children and provision for disabled children. In the 1980’s she co-founded and coordinated the European Network for School-age child care (1987-2003)  and  conducted the first survey of school-age childcare in the EU (1996). In the course of these studies she became interested in the role of the pedagogue, so was pleased to take up the Department of Health’s invitation to investigate social pedagogy in Europe, with particular reference to children’s residential care (1999). (Petrie, P., Boddy, J., Cameron, C., Wigfall, V., & Simon, A. (2006). Working with children in care: European perspectives, Open University Press) A programme of government-funded European work followed culminating in a demonstration project, introducing social pedagogy in children’s residential care in England.

In 2011, she published Communication Skills for Working with Children and Young People, Introducing Social Pedagogy, J.K.P. A special interest is social pedagogy practice and the creative arts, see for example Petrie, P., & Chambers, H. (2009). Richer lives: creative activities in the education and practice of Danish pedagogues: a preliminary study: report to Arts Council England. Her most recent work includes, as a member of the Social Pedagogy Consortium, partnering the Fostering Network in a pioneer programme to develop social pedagogy in foster care (2011-2016). She is part of the group developing SPPA and social pedagogy qualifications.

NICK CORKER is the Head of the Virtual School for Looked After Children, Care Leavers and Youth Justice and has worked in local schools and The Hackney

Learning Trust since 1998. He is a qualified teacher and holds the National Professional  Qualification for Headship.

He qualified as a teacher from the Roehampton institute in the early 90’s and since that time has spent most of his time in teaching and then leadership roles in inner London Schools.

In his current role he works closely with Hackney’s Children’s Social Care Department and is Vice Chair of both the adoption and fostering panels.

Nick has developed a team of collaborative professionals whose commitment, creativity and innovation has resulted in Hackney’s Looked After Children attaining some of the best results in the country.

 

ROBERT KOGLEK is the interim Head of the Corporate Parenting in Hackney. He qualified in the early 90’s as a social worker and social pedagogue in Germany. He holds a Master in Social Work (M.A.).

He moved to London in 2009 and works since that time for the London Borough of Hackney. Robert has led on various national and international projects including Head Heart and Hands and the DfE funded “Family Learning and Intervention Programme”.

In his current role he is committed to  demonstrate that social pedagogy and statutory social work can complement each other and ensure best outcomes for families and children.

 

NICOLA BOYCE’s biography to come soon.