Charlotte Greenwood, an experienced children and families social worker who has worked for SocialWork 2000 for many years recently attended a conference called ‘What Can We Do With This Child’ and has written the following article.

On the 29th and 30th November last year I attended a residental course in Leyland near Preston called ‘What can we do with this child’, run by Change Directions’ This is an orgainistaion run by Pat Curtis whom I first met 25 years ago, I was impressed by her! The conference attendees were a mixture of foster carers and adopters, psychologists, therapists and educationalists mostly from north of Birmingham.

The theme of the conference was focusing on the child’s brain and how, with help and treatment, the child’s brain can change and heal as it is ‘plastic’. The changes can be monitored through MRI scans and the parts of the brain before ‘recovery’ has taken place can be easily seen as ‘indentations’ which fall in. Children themselves become happier, better behaved and more receptive to learning and carers and their relatives are able to progress.

The day was spilt into very lengthy contributions from a psychologist, therapist and an adopter and trainer/author and an educationalist with their professional perspectives but all with the same focus. These were people that currently work with the Change Directions organisation.

The conference was very cost effective with a good conference venue (small hotel with big conference extension), solid delivery, some interactive tasks, good opportunities to chat and meet people from very varied disciplines and well worth the money which SocialWork 2000 reimbursed.

Academy Books were present on day two and everyone stocked up and over spent on up to date books. The learning curves were’ not to give up on children’, to work better as organisations, to especially have possibilities for the child and to be open to new research, learning opportunities and not to get too stuck in traditionalist and thereby possibly limiting debates about how to help children, parents, carers, adopters, teachers, without following action thereafter.