We are delighted to announce the first SPPA annual conference. We will have speakers from a range of perspectives, from early childhood education to working with older people and foster care, all intrigued by making connections with social pedagogy and charting a way forward for social pedagogically informed policy and practice in the UK.
*Not yet a member? Joining as a SPPA member only costs £70 and you can then avail of the SPPA member standard fee of £80 (and if you are a student/non-wage earner you can join for £25 and avail of the £25 conference fee) - the total cost is the same as attending the conference as a non-member, but you get one year access to other SPPA membership benefits.
Please note: The evening of Thursday 5th October 2017 will be a free Members Only event, at which the 1st Annual General Meeting of the Social Pedagogy Professional Association will also be held. Formal notification of the AGM will be sent to Members in accordance with SPPA Articles of Association.
How to get to Woburn House:
Woburn House is centrally located. There are numerous transport links to get here. You can also plan your journey through the Transport for London website.
Livestreaming:
Our two keynote speeches will be live streamed on UCL's website. You can access the talks via this link.
Date
06/10/2017 - 07/10/2017
Time
09:30 - 16:30
Location
Woburn House
London WC1H 9HQ
Pricing
Special first year conference fee offers.
SPPA member standard fee – £80
Non-member standard fee – £150
SPPA student and non-wage earner members – £25
Non-SPPA student and non-wage earners - £50
Not yet a member? Join here: www.sppa-uk.org/membership/
Clare Chamberlain is the Director of the Centre for Systemic Social Work. The Centre is being set-up as part of the Partners in Practice initiative with the support of the three boroughs and the Department for Education. The Centre for Systemic Social Work is a new venture, focused upon working collaboratively with the wider children's social care sector to improve all aspects of practice, supervision and leadership in social work services and provide skills development and systemic social work practice programmes for staff from the three boroughs and for other local authorities. 
Peter Moss is Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood Provision at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. He has researched and written on many subjects including early childhood education and care, and the relationship between early childhood and compulsory education; the relationship between employment, care and gender; and democracy in education. Much of his work has been cross-national, and he has led a European Commission network on childcare and an international network on parental leave. From 2005 to 2016 he co-edited the book series ‘Contesting Early Childhood’, whose aim is to question “the current dominant discourses surrounding early childhood, and offer instead alternative narratives of an area that is now made up of a multitude of perspectives”.
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 was in teaching, and working through drama, including in residential settings. Her research areas include early childcare and education, play and care services for school-age children and provision for disabled children. She cofounded 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), leading to her interest in social pedagogy and acceptance (1999) of Department of Health’s invitation to explore it further. A programme of government-funded European work culminated (2008) with piloting social pedagogy in children’s residential care in England, followed by contributing to Fostering Network’s introduction of social pedagogy into foster care. She has an ongoing involvement in social pedagogy and the creative arts and is one of the group now developing SPPA and social pedagogy qualifications. She is interested in social pedagogy for work with older people because she thinks they fit together, practically and theoretically.
Nicola Boyce is social pedagogy trainer for St Christopher’s Fellowship, a charity which provides fostering, residential and support services for children and young people. Her background is in residential child care where she became involved with developing social pedagogy at Essex County Council, doing participatory action research with children and staff to explore their experiences of social pedagogy in practice. She joined St Christopher’s in 2012 to open a new children’s home based on social pedagogic principles and in her current role provides training to staff and leads on strategic organisational development work to embed social pedagogy systemically.
Soulmaz trained and qualified as a Social Worker and Social Pedagogue, with a Bachelor of Science in Social Work. After qualification she continued her training in Family Therapy and Systemic Practice; she is a systemic practitioner since June 2014, trained at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Thure qualified as a Pedagogue in Denmark specialising in music within social education. He has lived and worked in the UK since 2007 and is particularly keen on promoting the 
Cecile is a social pedagogue working with young people in care, and as such she is always interested in the interaction between learning processes and social change. She expands on this in a blog: 
Andy has worked as a Qualified Teacher and Social Worker with young people. He has extensive experience of working in a wide range of settings offering both formal and informal education to children and young people both in and on the edge of care. He's worked for ThemPra since 2010, facilitating learning in a number of situations including large and small Local Authorities, Independent Children’s homes and Camphill Communities.
ial pedagogy pilot course run by Sylvia and Gabriel in 2007, which had a profound impact on him. He undertook a BA degree in social pedagogy at the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 2014, and then left the local authority for which he worked to join ThemPra in 2015. He currently facilitates team development sessions and courses for ThemPra and also teach on University of Central Lancashire’s new BA degree in social pedagogy, advocacy and participation.
Abby is a co-founder and a director of Jacaranda, a development and recruitment agency active in social pedagogy development since 2009. She has over a decade of experience recruiting social pedagogues and social workers. She has experience in, and a passion for, working with people and organisations to create the conditions conducive to sustainable social pedagogical development. She's been an active member of the Social Pedagogy Consortium, supports the Social Pedagogy Development Network, and contributes to the work of the Scaling Up Social Pedagogy project.
nal development and intercultural social work. He has had the opportunity to work with a variety of clients and age groups, e.g. street children in South America, homeless men and the elderly. After working in Scotland as a Children and Families social worker he joined the Jacaranda social pedagogy development team as an associate facilitator for social pedagogy training courses. He now plays an active role in the organisation; he is head of the Jacaranda Assessment Centre for the Crossfields Institute diplomas in social pedagogy. He is currently coordinating the first cohorts of learners on the Level 3 qualification who are having their prior learning recognised.
