Safaplace 2025: Giving our Children Roots & Wings to Manage Change

Welcome to the Safaplace Conference 2025: Giving our Children Roots & Wings! Join us at Stoke Newington School & Sixth Form for a day filled with insightful discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities. Our event aims to empower parents, educators, and caregivers with the tools and knowledge to support children's mental health, independence and resilience. Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and learn from experts in the field. See you there!

Info: Our guest speaker is Caro Giles, author of "Unschooled: the story of a family that doesn’t fit in". It’s not by choice that Caro Giles is educating her daughters at home. Like so many families with children who don’t fit into mainstream schools, her family has become marginalised by an education system that is chronically underfunded and unable to support special educational needs. While still a school teacher, Caro had no alternative but to leave her job and take on a different role at home, as full-time educator and advocate for her wonderful girls. Caro made the decision unaware of just how much it would overwhelm her identity as a woman and challenge to the very core what it means to be a mother. In her memoir, "Unschooled", Caro chronicles the relentless bureaucracy and isolation of being a single mother navigating a system that refuses to see her children. Through her own story, Caro interrogates a society that nurtures conformity rather than difference.

Info: The workshops below will repeat after the break, giving everyone the chance to attend two of their choice

Info: With Jo Law, Family & Systemic Psychotherapist. In this workshop, Jo will invite attendees to think about their own relationship to and experiences of change, with a focus on remembering their teenage years and the important transitions that occur in this time period. We will think about this through a number of lenses, and be curious about cultural and educational expectations in our society and how these have changed. We will also think about this in the context of Neurodiversity. Lastly, we will explore the inevitability of change (impermanence) and think of examples of this in everyday life.

Info: With Rose White, co-founder of Safaplace. This workshop will look at how we can support children’s safe use of the online world. Using resources from London Grid for Learning (LGfL) and linking it to the National Curriculum statutory guidance for Relationships and Sex education (RSE), we will explore key safeguarding issues and share practical tips. The session acknowledges the impact of the recent TV series Adolescence, highlighting why it is more important than ever to have open, ongoing conversations with young people about their digital lives.

Info: With Sharren Bridges, founder of Jen’s Acorn charity. Sharren’s workshop will be exploring ‘masking’: what masking is, how it can affect our amazing children and young people and how we, as the adults in their lives, can support them. She will be sharing ways to support a person who masks along with the importance of ‘whole body listening’ at home and in education settings, and how this can help us understand what a child or young person is trying to communicate with us. She will also be sharing the ‘Acorns to Oaks’ programme that can be used in education settings to support children and young people to help them to open up and take off their masks when they are at school. Her workshop will mention child loss and suicide. If that is a trigger for anyone attending this session, please let Sharren know. She can arrange a signal to give you a clue as to when this will be mentioned. She can also advise onplaces of mental health support to contact for young people, parents and carers.

Info: With Sarah Johnson an experienced educational leader and consultant, and Tim Linehan, parent and researcher who has worked with several charities. The workshop will focus on a new project called ‘We Belong’ which is being developed in Clapton Girls Academy and will invite parents to help shape the project. We Belong explores how peer-to-peer support can validate the experiences of families to help build a more inclusive education system. It will include an open discussion about the issues relating to school non-attendance.

Info: With Melanie Cunningham, author of "Becoming an Autism-Affirming Primary School." This workshop introduces a simple tool which we have used effectively to uncover the topics which are important to our children and gather their views on each of these topics. You may be surprised that autistic children have commonly held views on how they are experiencing school. I will share these views so that we can begin to generate an understanding of how autistic children may be experiencing school and the adaptations and adjustments which they are requesting. We should not expect our autistic children to have to adapt to our non-autistic world; we should be prepared to meet them ‘half-way’ by making the simple adaptations which they are requesting.
By taking these steps we have created a school where our autistic and neurodiverse pupils are thriving not surviving.

Info: With Julie Dobson, Assistant Head and Head of Sixth Form at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School. For secondary school students, the most obvious times of transition are from Year 6 to Year 7 and then from Year 11 to sixth form or college, but there are others. Julie will briefly share some of the strategies that are being implemented in her school, many of which have been student-led, and will then be asking those taking part in this workshop to consider how together we can best support children and young people through different transitions in school settings. This is a collaborative and practical session, with those attending being invited to share strategies that have worked well for them.

Info: Our second session will repeat the workshops above, giving everyone a chance to attend two of their choice

Info: Tim Linehan will introduce the Emotionally-Based Schools Avoidance Project, which is supported by Safaplace. Tim has worked with national charities including Anna Freud, Barnardo’s and Action for Children, promoting child mental health and wellbeing. He has carried out research into school non-attendance in Hackney and is a parent of a child who was unable to attend secondary school.

Info: Rhiannon Elgin (Specialist Intervention Team Manager at Hackney Education) will be sharing information about Hackney Education Alternative Learning Service – their bespoke packages of support for children who have barriers to education, and their plans to provide advice and support families who have children out of school or with complex mental health needs.

Info: An opportunity for our audience to participate

Info: Closing remarks by the Safaplace Team

Event Venue

Stoke Newington School & Sixth Form, Clissold Road, London, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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