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REAL Trust's Annual Leadership Two Day Conference 2024
- Day 1 - Thursday 14th November (full day)
- Day 2 - Friday 15th November (AM)
Mark Finnis will open the conference on Thursday morning with his two part session ‘The power of restorative practice: Building relational; culture by design and not default’
Restorative and relational based practice describe a way of being, an underpinning ethos, which enables us to build and maintain healthy relationships, resolve conflict and repair harm when relationships breakdown.
L30 provides an explicit framework which embodies the principles, values and practices of the philosophy of restorative and relational practice. It is founded on the principles of working ‘with’ people, rather than doing ‘to’ or ‘for’ others. When we work with and alongside people, rather than make decisions about them in isolation, outcomes and impact are so much greater.
Part One - The Power of Relationships and Working WITH
Restorative Practice is not about replacing traditional behaviour management systems. It’s certainly not about being soft or turning a blind eye to poor behaviour.It’s about elevating the culture of a school so people are pulled in, not pushed out, about fostering a greater sense of community and about encouraging a willingness to act in the right way for the right reasons.
Although its roots are clearly in restorative justice – as a way of repairing the harm done to the community and relationships within it – restorative practice has the bolder ambition of proactively developing the sense of community and seeking to increase the quality of the relationships across the school and, from there, into the wider community.So, how do you change the culture of a school? One classroom at a time. Where do you start? In the one you’re in now.
Part Two - What we don’t repair we repeat - The art of having High Challenge and High Support Conversations
This workshop will continue on from my keynote and build even further into the skills needed to have both high challenge conversations around behaviours (in children and adults) that don’t meet you school expectations and how we have high support (strength) based conversations catching children and adults getting it right more than we catch them getting it wrong.
This workshop will introduce the idea of restorative conversations through using a structured (not scripted) three bubble model to manage (and transform) conflict and tensions in a way that repairs harm and repairs relationships. After all, behaviour not translated will end up being transferred.
Mark is the founder and director of L30 Relational Systems and has more than twenty-five years’ experience of helping schools and organisations large and small, both nationally and internationally to develop highly connected relational cultures with people at the heart of everything theydo. Mark has also been involved in the national development of restorative practices since the late 1990s. Mark has also delivered keynotes alongside audiences across the UK, Spain, Finland, Canada, US to name a few.
He is the author of the number 1 bestselling book, Independent Thinking On Restorative Practice: Building relationships, improving behaviours and creating stronger communities. In 2019 he received the Chris Donovan Trust’s Restorative Practice Champion award in recognition of his work nationally.
Mark has advised on national policy and practice development since 2005 and was part of a small group who rewrote the national best practice guidance for restorative practitioners in 2012. He is also is a licensed NLP Master Practitioner trained and certified under Dr Richard Bandler and has been working with leaders offering coaching for over a decade.
Thursday afternoon Warren Larkin will explore trauma & resilience informed practice (what it is, what it isn’t, and how it can change the world), and also implementing trauma-informed approaches in 100 Secondary Schools in England – Early insights from a Randomised Controlled Trial.
Prior to founding Warren Larkin Associates in 2017, Warren spent 24 years in the NHS, working predominantly with individuals and families experiencing serious mental health difficulties. He went on to lead one of the two national centres of excellence in psychological care for psychosis.
Warren is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and in addition to his clinical work with people experiencing psychosis and trauma, he has remained an active lecturer and researcher holding many honorary academic positions, including for the last 6 years a Visiting Professor position at the University of Sunderland.
Warren developed the routine enquiry about adversity in childhood (REACh) approach as a way of assisting organisations to become more trauma-informed and to train professionals to ask routinely about adversity in their everyday practice. He has also been involved in policy development and has acted as an advisor to a number of UK and foreign government agencies. He was a member of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services National Task Force, the NICE expert reference group on first episode psychosis, the ‘Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation’ advisory group and was a contributing author of the Personality ‘Disorder’ Consensus Statement. He is currently supporting UNICEF in the Western Balkans to develop trauma-informed policy and practice. Currently Warren is co-leading the implementation of trauma informed approaches in 100 secondary schools in England, which is being evaluated by means of a randomised controlled trial funded by the Youth Endowment Fund and the Home Office.
The first part of Warren’s session ‘Trauma & Resilience informed practice – what it is, what it isn’t, and how it can change the world…’ will provide a definition of the terms ‘stress’, ‘trauma’, ‘adversity’ and ‘resilience’, and highlight the prevalence and impact of toxic stress childhood adversity and traumatisation in our society and on the lives of our children. He will explore the challenge of meeting the increasing demand facing services with an increasingly depleted workforce (both in terms of numbers and resilience), while at the same time creating trauma informed services and investing in prevention. This challenge may seem insurmountable, however, we know that by adopting a public health approach to trauma and adversity we can transform population health within generation if we have a shared, long-term commitment to preventing childhood adversity, supporting child and family wellbeing, detecting and mitigating the impact of trauma more routinely and promoting resilience across the life course. Schools play a fundamental role in the health and wellbeing of our children and act ‘in loco parentis’ , yet we are all aware of the seemingly impossible task of balancing the demands of meeting the emotional wellbeing needs of children (and their developing brains) while at the same time promoting intellectual and academic attainment. In conclusion, Dr Larkin will talk about resilience as the antidote to adversity, the power of relationships and why our number one priority has to be ‘looking after the people, who look after the people.’
The second part the afternoon ‘Implementing trauma-informed approaches in 100 Secondary Schools in England – Early insights from a Randomised Controlled Trial’ will build on the themes and ideas in session 1 and Dr Larkin will revisit the evidence on what predicts a successful life and the role of schools in this equation. He will outline the link between school exclusion and youth violence and consider the apparent incompatibility between the government’s current behavioural guidance and the widely held belief that attachment aware and trauma informed approaches in schools and colleges are effective in increasing safety, enabling a relationship driven culture and as a result improve attendance and attainment for students and improve confidence and satisfaction at work for staff while reducing burnout and turnover. However, the evidence base in the UK for the application of trauma informed theory and practice in educational and youth justice settings is in its infancy and in an attempt to generate robust scientific evidence, the Youth Endowment Fund have and the Home Office have funded a small number of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT). Dr Larkin is co-leading one of these RCTs which recruited over a hundred secondary schools in England to engage in a programme of trauma informed training, support and guidance designed to benefit staff and students in several key areas. Dr Larkin will share some early insights and learning from this pioneering work which has the potential to influence educational policy, investment decisions and day to day practice.
Sam Conniff will close the conference on Friday with his session ‘Be more Pirate – Inspiring Innovative Leadership’. Being more pirate is a shift in your mindset; a willingness to think differently, to challenge and be challenged, and to stop asking for permission to do what you know is right. It’s never been more difficult to create meaningful change and at the same time, bold creativity is more important than ever. Be More Pirate will help you and your teams to shift mindsets and behaviours, leading to more creative and confident crews as catalysts for change
Sam is an expert in uncertainty and dedicated to helping people navigate change and turn fear into opportunity. Sam’s mission is to equip people with the tools needed to not just thrive in an uncertain society, but to drive innovation, seize opportunities and lead others to become Uncertainty Experts themselves.
Sam is the author of the international best-seller and "modern life-bible" Be More Pirate. He was Co-Founder of Livity, the multi-award-winning social enterprise and youth-led creative Network, Co-founder of Digify Africa, and Co-Founder of Don’t panic, the original activist and Bafta-winning content studio. Sam has won Entrepreneur of the year, Agency of the Year, The Queens Award and many others.
REAL Trust Members – Early Bird Offer - BOOKINGS PRIOR TO FRIDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER
£180 – Full inclusive for both days / £120 – Thursday only
REAL Trust Members – BOOKINGS MADE AFTER FRIDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER
£200 - Full inclusive for both days / £140 – Thursday only
Non members
£260 - Full inclusive for both days / £160 – Thursday only
Please note – any cancellations made after Friday 11th October will still be charged