Seminars - Groups and Centres

Centre for Research on Children and Families Seminar Series: Spring 2023

The CRCF team are pleased to announce that the series of free lunch time seminars is back for Spring 2023, bringing you the latest important and thought provoking research on children and families. This time some of the seminars will take place on campus at UEA as well as online.

Responding to the ‘myth of invisible men’ report: bringing fathers into view

Wednesday 8th March | 1-2pm | MS TEAMS

Speaker: Dr Mary Baginsky (King’s College London)

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's report 'The Myth of Invisible Men' focussed on babies under one-year who have been harmed or killed by their fathers or other males who were in a caring role. It refers to evidence that midwifery and health visiting do not regularly and substantially involve fathers before and immediately after birth. The report recommended examining how a specific strand of work with fathers could be included in the Family Safeguarding model. This seminar will explore the views of health visitors and midwives - and their managers - both on working with fathers and on being drawn into the model.

Organisational barriers and opportunities to engage fathers in social work practice

Wednesday 03 May | 1-2pm | MS TEAMS

Speaker: Dr Nadav Perez-Vaisvidovsky - Senior lecturer, Faculty of Social Work, Ashkelon Academic College, Israel, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, University College London

'The low participation of fathers in social work and welfare interventions has attracted rising attention in recent years. However, studies in this area focused mainly on individual characteristics of the father and the social worker. In my talk, I will turn the spotlight to the organizational level - asking how does the organization of the services, their workplace culture and other meso-level factors affect the ability and the motivation of fathers to take part in interventions.’ – Dr Nadav Perez Vaisvidovsky

Please complete the form if you wish to receive an MS Teams link to join the seminar online. We'll only use your details to contact you regarding this event. We'll send you the link to join the seminar within one week of the event. Remember to check your junk and spam folders. If you have any questions, please contact us at crcf@uea.ac.uk.

Reunification as a permanency route for children in care: reunion stability and educational outcomes
Wednesday 10 May | 1-2pm | MS Teams
Speakers: Dr Birgit Larsson (UEA) & Prof Beth Neil (UEA)

Reunification, or returning home to family, is the most common way children in care achieve permanence in England. Up until recently, however, there has been little published information on who the children who return home in England are and their associated outcomes. This seminar presents research carried out by researchers at the University of East Anglia (Birgit Larsson and Beth Neil) and Manchester University (Marcello Morciano and Yiu-Shing Lau). The study was funded by Action for Children and was based on analysis of national administrative data submitted annually by local authorities to the Department for Education. The speakers will present a national picture of reunified children and outcomes related to stability (whether they remain home or return to care) and education (attainment at key stage 4). These findings will be contextualised by the wider knowledge base of reunification and implications for policy and social work practice will be discussed in light of these findings

Family stories: making change happen (and stick)
Wednesday 24 May | 1-2pm | MS Teams
Speaker: Dr Emma Maynard, Lecturer in Child & Family Health, King’s College London

The Family Stories project is a two-phased IPA study which explored lived experience of a total of 24 parents. All parents (23 mothers and 1 father) had experienced children's social care or early help support due to concerns about their child's well-being and safety. In particular, parents illuminated the nuanced ways in which they adopted newly learnt parenting strategies and gained parenting self-efficacy, resulting in a safer environment for their child. They describe social barriers such as stigma, fear of services, and the disapproval communicated by agencies, especially schools, which they negotiated on route to their preferred future. Alongside parenting per se, parents described their own challenges. Their stories of domestic violence, mental illness, previous child abuse and family breakdown, were peppered throughout their narratives as they made sense of experience. The findings have recently been published in the journal Families, Relationships & Societies (Maynard et al, 2023), focusing on a proposed model for enabling families to sustain positive change in complex family environments. Further publications are in progress, and work is ongoing to develop routes to impact through a co-production approach with the parents. In this presentation, the voices of these parents and their insights about what has helped transform their lives will be central to the discussion about what really matters when power, fear, and trauma surround expectations of change.

CRCF Seminars