About the Series

This video series gives training in some of the most challenging areas of social work and psychology when working with vulnerable or traumatized children, but thankfully, it feels like a conversation with friends around the table who can support and encourage you to do this hard work! 

Learn from Mick, Dan, and Caitlin (SFAC), three of the world’s leading instructors in Family Reunification, as they tackle the most challenging questions put to them by practitioners involved in the care and protection of children around the world.

Completing this course will provide practitioners with a 2.5 hours training certificate.

Course curriculum

  • 1

    Core Concepts and Definitions

    • [01] How do you account for the huge numbers of orphans globally, and why is care reform necessary?

    • [02] How is abuse defined and how can child-focused protection be applied?

    • [03] What common myths do people have about reintegrating children with families?

    • [04] How do you turn good intentions into good child protection practice?
  • 2

    Child Welfare: Best Interest Principle

    • [05] How can we protect a reintegrated child when their abuser may still be in the community?

    • [06] What is the difference between corporal punishment and abuse?

    • [07] What’s the best way to help children with long term medical conditions?

    • [08] Which tools are best to ensure safety of children and conduct assessments?

    • [09] Should our organization be involved with government advocacy for children’s rights?

    • [10] What do we do when different government offices affecting children are not on the same page?

    • [11] What do you do when a family is not willing to take care of the child, but they are also not willing to relinquish their parental rights?
  • 3

    Child Welfare: Best Practices

    • [12] How do you contextualize international standards for local contexts?

    • [13] How can we avoid stress and burnout in our team?

    • [14] What's the difference in allowing children to live away from home in boarding schools?

    • [15] Can staff from our children's home become carers for children in the community?

    • [16] If a child forms attachment in foster care, doesn't that make their next placement more difficult?

    • [17] How do we equip staff and parents to be Trauma-Informed caregivers?

    • [18] How do we support donors in our move away from children’s homes to family care for children?
  • 4

    Additional Resources

    • [SFAC] Tips to Help You Thrive

    • [SFAC] Resources for Professionals

Meet your Instructors

Mick Pease

A qualified social worker with over 30 years of experience, Mick has worked in child protection, fostering, and adoption. The former coal miner spent a year in Brazil with his wife Brenda, volunteering in an orphanage, an experience that led him to establish SFAC in 2002. An avid Leeds United football fan he is also a family man that loves spending time with his grandchildren. He appeared in the film Lost Kites and is co-author of the book Children Belong in Families. Mick won the International Impact Legacy Award in 2019 in Leeds; a testimony of his legacy in international social work.

Caitlin Hope

Caitlin has worked in Australia, Kenya, and India with vulnerable children and adults as a chartered psychologist, trainer, and protective behaviors practitioner. She specializes in working with those at risk of sexual exploitation and providing supervision, case consultation, training, and debriefing, and personal counseling to local field workers. Having both experiences working in a children's home and educating organizations on care reform, Caitlin is regularly asked to speak and train at international conferences.

Dan Hope

Dan is a an award-winning social worker having won Practice Educator of the Year at the National Social Work Awards in 2016 (England). As a qualified social worker and protective behaviors practitioner, Dan has over 15 years of experience working in residential care, community & family support work, child protection investigations, and working with children and carers in alternative care. Dan has worked in Kenya and Uganda with small organizations developing foster care and child-headed household projects. He has also worked in court teams where he represented children in family and childcare cases. Dan has worked for SFAC since 2009 on a voluntary basis and then full-time in 2017.

About SFAC

For 20 years, SFAC has trained hundreds of NGOs, governments, and courts across 47 countries to help turn good intentions of those providing care and protection to children, into best practices, so that children can thrive. SFAC's work is designed around foundational, science-based concepts and ideas; as well as research and knowledge gained from practice and from those with lived experience. SFAC works with organizations to adapt those concepts and ideas to their context, culture, and resources. There is no one model of practice. Just as every child is unique and their care should be, too, every organization, country, and region is unique to the way they protect and care for children. Find out more on their website https://sfac.org.uk/.