Shakespeare’s Dysfunctional Families: Opening Keynote at the BASPCAN 2018 Congress

BASPCAN: For Child Protection Professionals

I am really pleased to announce that the opening keynote address for the 2018 BASPCAN International Congress will be by Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Paul will be kicking off our congress with a thespian slant from the great playwright himself, bringing a fresh, out-of-the-box approach to thinking about child protection.

SHAKESPEARE’S DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES

King Lear, Hamlet, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale: Shakespeare consistently bodies forth family life as dysfunctional, broken, often violent. In this key-note address, Paul Edmondson, Head of Research for The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, considers some of the portrayals of dysfunctional families in Shakespeare’s plays, relevant aspects of Shakespeare’s own life, and considers why this theme seems especially appropriate to our own times.

“Here let us breathe and haply institute

A course of learning and ingenious studies”

The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Scene 1

Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Paul Edmondson is Head of Research and Knowledge and Director of the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of many books and articles about Shakespeare, including: The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography (with Stanley Wells for Cambridge University Press, 2015), Shakespeare’s Creative Legacies (with Peter Holbrook, The Arden Shakespeare, 2016); and Finding Shakespeare’s New Place: an archaeological biography (with Kevin Colls and William Mitchell, Manchester University Press, 2016). His Shakespeare: Ideas in Profile (Profile Books, 2015) is an overview of Shakespeare for the general reader. He has published work on the Sonnets, the musicality of Shakespeare’s words, the poetry of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s influence on the Brontës, and writes theatre and book reviews. He is Chair of the Hosking Houses Trust for women writers, a Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association, an honorary fellow at the University of Birmingham, and a priest in the Church of England. He has lived and worked in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1995.

Registration opens soon

Registration for the congress will open soon. There are special rates for BASPCAN members and for students, the unemployed, those on low incomes and those from low-income countries.

A call for abstracts is now open. We are looking for presentations from practitioners, researchers and experts by experience (both survivors of abuse and users of family services). Click here to find out more orto submit an abstract for the congress.

Click here to find out about the other exciting keynote speakers, to see the programme, and for more information about the congress.

“Get thee before to Coventry. Fill me a bottle of Sack.”

– Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

February 20, 2017

Child Protection at the Edge of Chaos: Irene Stevens at the BASPCAN Congress April 2018

Our second confirmed keynote speaker for the BASPCAN child protection congress, 2018 is Dr Irene Stevens, independent consultant and expert in complexity theory.

Child Protection at the Edge of Chaos

The protection of children takes place in a dynamic and, at times, fast moving environments. Yet many of the models which are used in risk management and decision making are based on linear assumptions. While this has been challenged, particularly in the Munro Review, there may be resistance to thinking outside the usual linear box. I will present some key ideas from complexity theory and explore how the development of a ‘Complexity Imagination’ among those who work with children can contribute to better outcomes for children and staff. The key concepts among others to be explored and related to child protection are bifurcation, emergence, self-organising criticality, dissipative structures and non-linear conceptualisation of issues.

Complexity theory, by its very nature addresses life at ‘the edge of chaos’ in dynamic systems. This is at the very crux of decision making in practice. In order to protect children, we need to think outside the box. Concepts from Complexity theory can add to the toolkit used by practitioners by raising questions about the nature of risk and how we, as human beings, deal with this. By developing some of the concepts from Complexity theory and exploring how they can be put into practice, staff and organisations may be much better prepared to contribute to the protection of children.

Irene Stevens

Dr Irene Stevens was a residential child care worker and manager, and a social care educator from 1984-2000. She then worked at the Scottish Centre of Excellence for Residential Child Care based at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, from 2000-2011, where she carried out training, research and evaluations in residential child care. Since 2011, she has been an independent child care consultant carrying out research and training both nationally and internationally. She has published on the topic of Complexity Theory since 2007 and has presented on the topic of risk and complexity at national and international conferences.

Thinking Outside the Box: Innovative Perspectives on Protecting Children and Young People

BASPCAN 10th International Congress, 8th-11th April, 2018, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

This major Congress will bring together experts by experience – survivors of abuse and users of services – practitioners, researchers and trainers, commissioners and policy makers from around the UK, Europe and beyond, to learn from each other, reflect and consider how we can improve services to support families and protect children and young people.

The theme of Thinking Outside the Box reflects our desire to learn and develop, encouraging participants to be creative and reflexive, and to interact with each other.

Update your knowledge and skills, learning from new and emerging research
Hear innovative and challenging keynote talks from a range of speakers within and outside the child protection fields
Celebrate the good work and progress that has been made in safeguarding children, while acknowledging the ongoing pain experienced by those affected by abuse and neglect, and recognizing the need to continually learn and improve
Network with others who feel passionately about protecting children and supporting families

The call for abstracts and registration opens soon. Keep an eye on the website for further details, for the full programme and details of other keynote speakers.

To register your interest and receive the latest updates as they become available, please email conferences@baspcan.org.uk with your email address and the header ‘Congress 2018 Updates’.

February 15, 2017February 20, 2017

Pebbles in the fairy tale: Anne Fine, children’s author at the BASPCAN 2018 Congress

I am really excited that Anne Fine, celebrated children’s laureate will be a keynote speaker at our BASPCAN 10th International Congress to be held at the University of Warwick in April 2018. Anne is the author of such books as Madame Doubtfire, Flour Babies, and The Tulip Touch. Her keynote talk, Pebbles in the fairy tale will explore what we can learn from children’s literature about protecting children.

Thinking outside the box

The theme of the congress is ‘Thinking outside the box: innovative perspectives on protecting children and young people.’ The theme reflects our desire to learn and develop, encouraging participants to be creative and reflexive and to learn from each other.

The congress will bring together practitioners, survivors of abuse, researchers, trainers and policy makers. We will learn from each other, reflect, and consider how we can improve services to support families and protect children and young people.

Pebbles in the fairy tale: what can child protection learn from children’s literature

Literature has always been the most accessible instrument we have for ethical enquiry and the clearest way to answer Socrates’ great question, “How ought we to live?” But all too often the child’s need for a means to interpret their own experience of childhood is ignored. A young person who cannot bear even to begin to think about his or her own unhappy and stressed situation can often begin, safely, to explore the problems they face through fiction – somebody else’s problem.

In her talk, Anne Fine will show how books can offer shafts of light and comfort to the troubled child. She will show how they can foster self-scrutiny – not just in the young reader him or herself, but also in the (often overly self-protective) adults who deal with them. Anne will show what these fictional avenues of vicarious experience can mean to young readers, what insights they can bring, and what a comfort they can be. She will try to show how the tolerance and understanding offered by particular novels can offer the twenty first century equivalent of the pebbles in the fairy tale, gleaming in the moonlight and showing the way out of the dark forest.

Anne Fine

Anne is a distinguished writer for both adults and children. She has twice won both of Britain’s most coveted awards for children’s literature, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread (now Costa) Award, along with a Guardian Award, two Smarties/Nestle Awards, and many other national, regional and international prizes.

Anne is known for writing, with sensitivity and often with humour, on many serious subjects that affect the lives of young readers. Madame Doubtfire tackles the topic of access and custody after divorce. Both Goggle-Eyes and Step by Wicked Step delve into the special strains and complications of stepfamily relationships. Flour Babies is a comedy that illuminates for its readers both the joys and the sheer effort and commitment necessary for successful parenting. The Tulip Touch is a novel about a seriously disturbed child from an unsupportive home. The Book of the Banshee delineates teenage upheavals. Blood Family deals with the topic of family brutality and addiction. Up On Cloud Nine is a masterful portrait of an eccentric child’s progress through education. Charm School has been described as ‘Germaine Greer for Juniors’, and Bill’s New Frock unpacks unthinking gender stereotypes.

Anne Fine has also published eight black comedies for adults. She was Children’s Laureate from 2001-3. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded an OBE. Her work has been translated into forty five languages.

Registration opens soon

Registration for the congress will open soon. There are special rates for BASPCAN members and for students, the unemployed, those on low incomes and those from low-income countries.

A call for abstracts will open soon. We are looking for presentations from practitioners, researchers and experts by experience (both survivors of abuse and users of family services). So watch this space, or register your interest on the BASPCAN congress website.

Click here to find out about the other exciting keynote speakers, to see the programme, and for more information about the congress.