Our speakers
Who's Who?
We’re thrilled to be supported by a whole host of experts who are changing outcomes for families every day through their research, knowledge, campaigning, and partnership working. We’d also like to say a huge thank you to our sponsors who’ve helped us put together this event – your support is gratefully received.
Join us and experience our fantastic speaker line up and help us make a change for the future.
Event Host
Dani Wallace
Founder of the I Am The Queen Bee movement
Dani is one of life’s true survivors, and has overcome difficult circumstances to become one of the most renowned and exciting motivational speakers. She set up I Am The Queen Bee movement to help others find their voice and power on stage, and the Fly Anyway Foundation to support survivors of domestic abuse to set up their own businesses. Dani will be bringing her own unique brand of compassion, confidence and charisma to the role of Conference Host.
If you have a general enquiry or any questions then we are here to help, contact us today
Speaker Line-up
Dana Ashley and Kerry Robertson
Innovative Services
Dana and Kerry are the Assistant Director and Director of Therapeutic Care at Innovate Services – a practice-led service called on by local authorities who are looking to improve their care offering. The Innovate team partners with LAs to identify better, more efficient ways of delivering children’s social work, children’s residential, and foster care services. They work across a number of specialist areas, including restructuring duty and assessment services, reducing long-term reliance on Child in Need plans, securing better outcomes for children with complex needs, and supporting with capacity to manage incoming and long-term cases.
Caroline Caesar-Caston
Associate Director at POhWER
Presently an Associate Director at POhWER, a human rights and advocacy charity, I am a former independent mental health advocate (IMHA); local authority children’s care home manager; youth justice practitioner; and counsellor to children and families affected by terminal illness. I am passionate about trauma informed interventions that address the effects of social inequity and inequality.
Tessa Chapman
Channel 5 News
Working in local radio and at Sky News and ITV Granada before joining Channel 5 a decade ago, Tessa has covered breaking news stories all over the world. In November 2021, Tessa fronted two in-depth reports into Child to Parent Abuse – showing how the media is crucial in furthering knowledge around this hidden form of domestic abuse. Earlier this year, Tessa produced another report, focused around a mother whose son had been charged and imprisoned for attacking her.
Alan Collins
Hugh James Solicitors
A solicitor for more than 30 years, Alan is one of the most well-known and experienced in the field of child abuse litigation. He’s acted in high-profile cases including the Jimmy Savile and Windrush scandals, and represented interested parties in a number of public inquiries, working in the UK and across the world. He’s regularly asked by the media to comment on serious personal injury and child abuse issues, is a regular speaker at legal conferences, and is a director for the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers.
Professor Rachel Condry
University of Oxford
Rachel Condry is Professor of Criminology at the Centre for Criminology in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Her work focuses broadly on the intersections between crime and the family and she has researched child to parent abuse for twelve years. She is co-investigator on the Excluded Lives study based in the Department of Education which aims to advance a multi-disciplinary understanding of the political economies of school exclusion. She edits the book series Routledge Studies in Crime, Justice and the Family, and is co-editor of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and Associate Editor of The Journal of Criminology.
Vickie Crompton
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Partnership
Vickie runs the DASV Partnership, bringing together key agencies from across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to work together in order to reduce harm, risk and costs caused by domestic abuse and sexual violence. The Partnership also looks at methods of preventing these crimes occurring across the area, and is responsible for commissioning places of refuge and outreach support, IDVAs and ISVAs, professional training and raising awareness.
Ben Donagh
Victim Support
As well as his role within Victim Support, an independent charity which supports those who’ve experienced crime (including friends and family of direct victims), Ben is also completing his PhD at the University of Birmingham. His particular research interests are around the impact of exposure to domestic abuse on children and young people.
Emily Fei
Domestic Abuse Commissioner
Emily is the Chief of Staff at the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s office, having previously had oversight of the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy for the Home Office. The Commissioner is an independent voice speaking on behalf of victims and survivors, raising public awareness and holding agencies and the Government to account in tackling domestic abuse.
Lucy Giles
SafeLives
SafeLives is a UK-wide charity which focuses on ending domestic abuse, working alongside organisations to transform responses, listen to survivors, and support individuals and families to get the right help at the right time. In addition to delivering professional training, SafeLives also works with partners to provide multi-agency support. Lucy specialises in multi-agency risk assessment conferences, and delivers bespoke work for SafeLives including developing work around older people and domestic abuse, consultancy work and training.
Eleanor Haworth
Adoption UK
With a background in social work across a range of public sector organisations, Eleanor now has responsibility for the delivery of support programmes for Adoption UK. Her teams has a wealth of personal and professional experience to help them collectively deliver excellent services. Eleanor’s own experience includes working within social work practice improvement, service design and delivery, family group conferencing, children and families social work, and therapeutic offending behaviour projects within prisons and probation. She aims to use her expertise to create excellent adoption support for all families.
Don’t miss out, book your ticket today to experience our fantastic line-up of speakers
Dr Amanda Holt
University of Roehampton
Amanda has been researching child to parent abuse for a number of years, writing Adolescent to Parent Abuse: Current Understandings in Research, Policy and Practice in 2013 and editing a second book three years later. Her focus for research projects has included violence towards kinship carers, parricide in England and Wales, adolescent family violence within a neurodiverse context and a London-centric comprehensive assessment. Amanda has advised the Home Office and appeared on radio, television and at international conferences.
Tony Hyland MBE
Department for Work and Pensions
Tony has worked for the DWP for over 30 years, beginning his career as an adviser at a Jobcentre in East London. Since then he’s worked on a number of large-scale projects making a huge difference to people’s lives. Alongside dedicating much of his time to mentoring, counselling and supporting others, Tony has responsibility for numerous DWP-backed Covenants, including the Child to Parent Abuse Covenant (CPAC) developed by PEGS to help employers provide effective policies and practices for staff and service users.
Michelle John
Founding Director of PEGS
Combining a background in family law and domestic abuse with lived experience of CPA, Michelle has supported more than 2,000 families through PEGS as well as influencing national policy and training organisations across the UK in CPA-awareness. She has been named among the WISE 100 top Women in Social Enterprise twice, consulted with the Home Office over the CPA section of the Domestic Abuse Bill guidelines, and become one of the leading voices in the campaign to raise awareness and increase support for those experiencing this often-hidden type of domestic abuse.
Dr Andrew Newman
Forensic CAMHS
Andrew specialises in forensic mental health, working across the South West (North) region. Forensic CAMHS covers the whole of England and works with young people presenting a risk to others, where it’s suspected or confirmed that there is an underlying mental health condition. Referrals can be made by any other agency, in situations when violence has occurred or been threatened, or in other circumstances where the child or young person is starting fires or displaying other harmful behaviours.
Please connect on Twitter: @as_newman
Thien-Trang Nguyen Phan
Doctoral Researcher
Thien Trang Nguyen Phan is currently a Research Assistant with the National Policing Vulnerability, Knowledge, and Practice Programme (VKPP) Domestic Homicide Project, and a Board Member of PEGS. She has worked in the VAWG sector for 12 years, most recently at Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse, an innovative second-tier organisation who aims to achieve system change through a coordinated community response to domestic abuse. She has recently completed her doctoral research at the Policing Institute for the Eastern Region (PIER), Anglia Ruskin University, focusing on mothers’ experiences of abuse by their adult children, and has delivered trainings and presentations on adult family violence and adult child to parent abuse to a wide audience.
Dunston Patterson
Youth Justice Board
Dunston specialises in early intervention and resettlement support, and parenting/family support services in his role with the Youth Justice Board. The organisation aims to ensure children make positive contributions to society, creating safer communities and preventing offending; they’re responsible for advising the Secretary of State for Justice, Government departments and other organisations about how the system is working and what improvements could be made, sharing best practice, commissioning research, and handing out grants to support the youth justice system and its related services.
Dr Joy Shacklock
Royal College of General Practitioners
Joy Shacklock has been a GP for almost 20 years, and is also the named GP for child protection within the Harrogate and Rural District locality, as well as being the Safeguarding Clinical Champion for the Royal College of General Practitioners. As part of her roles, Joy works closely with other agencies such as the other Royal Colleges and organisations within the domestic abuse sector.
Dipti Solanki
Grief and Emotional Recovery Coach
Dipti is a qualified grief and emotional recovery coach, homeopath and speaker. She’s spent the past 13 years helping others to achieve success and potential which has previously been difficult to reach due to the blocks caused by unresolved grief, loss and trauma. Dipti uses practical coaching methods, holding space, and homeopathy within her work and is passionate about helping people heal, and in the process resolving the physical and emotional symptoms caused by their past experiences.
Contributors
Laura Rowe
Align Lifestyle
Laura Rowe is the owner and founder of Align Lifestyle. She is a global Wellness and Empowerment coach, an ex-NHS theatre practitioner, a health science specialist, and a trauma and cancer survivor, on a mission to help people rediscover who they are at their core, to see how truly powerful they are, how to gain emotional freedom by living intentionally and finding calm in the chaos of life. Because after struggling for years with anxiety, depression and eventually cancer, Laura learnt the hard way that if we don’t make time for our wellness, we’ll be forced to make time for our illness.
“I am passionate about creating a society with less burnout, anxiety & stress, so we can be a nation more focused on health, wealth & happiness.”
Using science backed holistic modalities such as meditation, breathwork, yoga and mindset practices, Laura is here to help more of us embrace better health without it feeling like a chore.
Laura has contributed a range of breathing space resources for the conference, she is available for public speaking events, wellness projects, as well as private consultations, and group coaching.