LAUNCH EVENT: CHILD PROTECTION PRACTITIONERS’ SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

Your History Counts:

Why we should preserve the memories of child protection practitioners through co-producing oral history life narratives

30th September 2025, 12:00 – 13:30pm

Free to attend but please book your place at https://www.childprotectionprofessionals.org.uk/events/your-history-counts/

 

To celebrate the launch of a new Association of Child Protection Professionals Special Interest Group, Dr Ruth Beecher and Dr Claudia Soares are pleased to host a conversation about practitioner experiences in working with vulnerable or marginalised children over the last 75 years.

Whether you are a newly qualified practitioner or someone who has practised for many years, whether you have worked in statutory services or in outreach and early help, we would like to talk to you. We will discuss why is it important for us to understand, remember and preserve life stories of those who work with and support children and families and why everyone’s story matters. Come and find out how you can be involved in our research and the options depending on your availability and interests.

Both Beecher and Soares are historians of child welfare. At the Launch, they will introduce their research projects ‘Recovery Histories’ and ‘Caring Communities.’ Both projects are innovative ‘firsts’ in trying to gather the histories of two under-researched areas. The Recovery Histories Project is investigating changing understandings of child sexual abuse, harm, trauma and recovery from the 1950s to the present day; Caring Communities: Rethinking Children’s Social Care, 1800-present is examining the labour, experiences and impact of children’s social care between 1800 and the present.

The session will be a mixture of presentation, discussion, and Q&A and we will also have some short oral history snippets and archival materials to bring our histories alive.

This session is the launch of the newly created ‘History and Practice’ Special Interest Group, which aims to create a safe space to explore historical issues concerning child abuse and child protection in a deep and reflective way.