Events

ExChange Wales brings leading researchers together with practitioners and service users to share expertise, research evidence and care experiences.

Through our conferences, workshops, lectures and seminars, ExChange provides free, high-quality training to support the ongoing development of social care professionals across Wales. Attracting leading national speakers, together we learn and advise on research, impacting both policy and practice. Our events and resources enrich skills while foregrounding the lived experience of care-experienced people.

We have a range of ways that you can work with ExChange. If you wish to host an ExChange workshop, webinar, podcast or blog, simply contact us.

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Annual Adoption Lecture 2024

Following our hugely successful adoption conference in 2023, we are delighted to launch our Annual Adoption Lecture 2024. Our guest speaker will be Professor Laura Machin from Lancaster University, who will present her work on the Adopters Advocacy Project. Registration is now open. Professor Machin – herself both an adopted child and an adoptive parent – sits on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Adoption and Permanence. She launched the Adopters Advocacy project to highlight the voices and needs of prospective adopters and adopters during the adoption process and after a child has been placed, without diminishing the needs of adoptees and their birth families. Her current project focuses on the mental health and support needs of adopters, based on a series of focus groups with adopters. The lecture will be held on Wednesday 20th March, 10.30am-12.00pm in Glamorgan Building, Cardiff, the heart of social sciences at Cardiff University. It will be a hybrid event. Please REGISTER NOW to attend in person or online.

location-iconRoom -1.80, Cardiff University Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT (or online)

time-icon10:30 - 20/03/2024

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Webinar: Improving practice with fathers in children’s services

Improving practice with fathers in children’s services Presenter: Jonathan Scourfield, Professor of Social Work, CASCADE, Cardiff University 15th April 2024 12 - 1pm There is a long-standing and ongoing problem of practice in children’s services focusing primarily on mothers and failing to properly engage fathers (the term used here in an inclusive sense). This works against the interests of women, men and children. The causes of the problem are complex. The presenter first studied it when doing his PhD in the late 1990s and more recent evidence would suggest there has been little change since then. This webinar will introduce the issue and then describe research-based training and organisation development designed to improve the situation. ISAFE (Improving Safeguarding through Audited Father-Engagement) was developed by The Fatherhood Institute and CASCADE at Cardiff University. Its effectiveness is currently being tested in a randomised controlled trial funded by Foundations, the national What Works Centre for children and families. ISAFE is based on previous work by the two organisations: training developed by the presenter and colleagues in Cardiff and a multi-layered father-engagement intervention designed and implemented by the Fatherhood Institute, which the presenter evaluated. Also, the skills training element introduces motivational interviewing, the use of which in children’s services has been pioneered by CASCADE academics.

location-iconOnline, ZOOM

time-icon12:00 - 15/04/2024

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CARE Seminar: 'Promoting carers wellbeing: current research and future directions'.

Research studies about carers’ wellbeing over the last decade have highlighted the impact of caregiving on informal carers’ financial, physical and mental health. In this seminar hosted by the Centre for Adult Social Care Research (CARE) at Cardiff University we focus on the implications for carers’ social wellbeing and present some of the latest research from the UK and Australia about the social welfare of carers. Join us for this free in-person seminar.

location-iconEvent Space, sbarc|spark, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ

time-icon11:00 - 21/05/2024

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Webinar: From research recommendation to government initiative: The Wales Safeguarding Repository

Our research in collaboration with senior practitioners has led the Welsh Government to overhaul its safeguarding review procedures for the most serious incidents and deaths in Wales due to domestic violence, mental ill-health, offensive weapons and those involving vulnerable adults and children at risk. A key aspect of the implementation of the new Single Unified Safeguarding Review (SUSR) process has been to commission us to develop the Wales Safeguarding Repository (WSR), utilising the expertise of criminologists, subject matter experts and computer scientists applying text mining and machine learning techniques. The WSR is globally unique in its scope, security, functionality, and centrality to government, and will enable researchers and practitioners to extract new learning about violence, abuse, vulnerability and safeguarding. This presentation will discuss the underpinning research, engagement with stakeholders to develop the SUSR and WSR, the distinctiveness of the WSR as a resource for researchers and practitioners, and potential for it to significantly impact policy and professional practice across Wales.

location-iconOnline, ZOOM

time-icon13:00 - 29/04/2024

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Webinar: Enabling talk and reframing messages: Working creatively and collaboratively to create impact

This presentation explores how creative and collaborative approaches can be drawn on as techniques of data production and tools of dissemination and impact. The focus of the presentation is a qualitative study into the educational experiences and aspirations of care experienced children and young people in Wales (n=67). The project worked with care experienced peer researchers and drew on visual, creative, and participatory techniques to explore participants experiences of education and, importantly, their opinions on what could be done to improve it. This multimodal approach allowed space for participants to think through their subjective, mundane, but important, experiences that operate alongside, and interact with, more structural challenges. Alongside a report, book and journal articles, a range of films, magazines, artwork, and music outputs were developed, as well as training workshops and a website, to ensure that the project recommendations could reach wide and diverse audiences. This presentation suggests that the perspectives of children and young people need to be given a platform to inform policy and practice. Accordingly, researchers need to be creative in their approaches to both fieldwork and dissemination; harnessing the impact of the arts to make positive changes in the everyday lives of children and young people.

location-iconOnline, ZOOM

time-icon13:00 - 09/04/2024

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Webinar: Working with stakeholders to enhance responses to child criminal exploitation

This session will provide an overview of our work on child criminal exploitation in Wales. It will begin with a brief introduction about how CASCADE became involved in this research and the importance of working with stakeholders from the research design stage to the co-production of research outputs. Presenter: Dr Nina Maxwell The session will consider how the research team engaged with young people, parents and professionals to ensure the research added value to existing practice. The session will finish with a critical overview of the impact of this research portfolio on policy and service provision with reference to some of the co-produced outputs.

location-iconOnline, ZOOM

time-icon12:00 - 22/04/2024

Check out our latest conference.

ExChange Wales conferences bring leading researchers together with practitioners and service users to share expertise, research evidence and care experiences.
On the Journey: Navigating Mental Health

On the Journey: Navigating Mental Health

Sep 28, 2023

1st – 24th November 2023 This conference series will run throughout November 2023. We have brought together a range of speakers and researchers who consider issues of mental health throughout the life course, including for children and older people. We…