Annual safeguarding conference
🏷️ From £250 (Non member Delegate Fee includes 1 year SACPA membership)
🎧 All those involved in safeguarding
📍 Broadway House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NQ
🏆 Winners announced for the Annual Safeguarding Awards (enter before October 1, 2026)
With significant changes to safeguarding guidance now in effect, this conference provides an essential update for safeguarding professionals across health, social care, sports, and the voluntary sector. Focusing on Working Together 2026, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 and contemporary safeguarding practice, delegates will gain practical insights into creating resilient organisations, strengthening safeguarding culture and improving outcomes for children and young people.
This event will be held jointly with:
09:30 – 10:00 Registration & refreshments
10:00 – 10:15 Welcome: the safeguarding journey from regulation to reflection
An introduction to the conference theme, exploring how regulation, relationships, reasoning and reflection contribute to effective safeguarding and resilient organisations.
10:15 – 10:45 Regulate before we educate
An immersive movement-based opening experience demonstrating how regulation through movement and sensory experiences supports learning, well-being and effective safeguarding practice. This session will also focus building on our cultural humility.
- Speaker: Julene Robinson, Movement Specialist
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 11:45 Beyond compliance: reflective practice as a safeguarding intervention
Discover how reflective practice strengthens professional judgement, support staff wellbeing and helps build a positive safeguarding culture.
- Speaker: Dr Sylvia B Smith (FHEA, SWE Registered, MBASW)
11:15 – 12:00 The child’s voice in action: recruitment, culture and accountability
Learn how involving children in recruitment and organisational decision making can strengthen safeguarding culture and accountability.
12:00 – 12:45 Trauma-informed workplaces: what organisations can learn from care experience
Explore how psychologically safe workplaces, informed by care experience, can improve wellbeing, retention and safeguarding practice.
12:45 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:15 Teenage relationship abuse: recognising coercion, control and harm
Gain practical insights into recognising and responding to abuse in adolescent relationships, including coercive control and technology- facilitated harm.
14:15 – 15:00 Safeguarding in 2026: Working Together, KCSIE and what inspectors expect
A practical update on the latest safeguarding, legislation and inspection expectations for education and safeguarding professionals.
- Speaker: Kevin Hartley, Senior Consultant for the NSPCC
15:00 – 15:15 Refreshments
15:15 – 15:45 Artificial intelligence, sport and safeguarding
Explore the safeguarding implications of AI, deepfakes, digital identity and emerging online risks for children and young people.
- Speaker: Rosalind Harrison, Social Media and Content Marketer
15:45 – 16:30 Closing keynote: why regulation, relationships and resilience in key for effective safeguarding
Bringing together the day’s key themes, this keynote explores how organisations can embed resilient, relationship-based safeguarding cultures.
16:30 – 16:45 Annual safeguarding awards and close
The SACPA Awards are held annually each autumn to celebrate and recognise outstanding contributions to safeguarding and child protection. Interested in entering? Find out more here. Please note, entries will close on October 1, 2026.
Speakers:
Dr Mariya Ali, Director, SACPA
Mariya is an internationally recognised safeguarding and child protection expert with over 20 years’ multidisciplinary experience. She has held senior advisory, academic, legal, and leadership roles, including serving as Maldives Minister of Gender, Family, and Human Rights, leading reforms in child protection law and policy. Internationally, she has advised UNICEF, UNDP, and ECPAT on child sexual abuse, exploitation, and protection systems. Holding qualifications in law and child psychology, she has published widely on child rights, online safety, and trauma-informed practice. Mariya’s strategic vision, policy expertise, and frontline insight equip her to bring both global perspective and local understanding to SACPA’s mission.
Julene Robinson
Julene is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, scientist, and wellbeing practitioner. A Master’s graduate of Rose Bruford College who also holds a BSc in Environmental Chemistry she combines artistic practice with scientific inquiry to explore leadership, resilience, and human flourishing. A trained yoga and meditation instructor, Julene integrates a mind-body-spirit approach into her creative practice, championing wellbeing, healing, and sustainable creativity. Recognised by Arts Council England as a global leader in theatre and performance, Julene’s work centres on the power of storytelling to inspire personal and social transformation. Through performance, facilitation, and research, she empowers artists, leaders, and communities to cultivate resilience, lead with authenticity, and build cultures of care.
Dr Sylvia B Smith (FHEA, SWE Registered, MBASW)
Sylvia is Founder and Director of Incline Training Consultants Ltd, specialising in social work education, leadership development, and anti-racist practice. Her doctoral research examined how psychoanalytical approaches can strengthen social work leadership. She offers reflective practice, coaching, and supervision to individuals, groups, and teams across the sector, and is co-convenor of The Reflective Practice Research Network. Sylvia’s work includes commissioned evaluation of anti-racist practice strategy and supporting doctoral students in their research development. She hosts the Social Workers Matter podcast, serves as Vice Chair of a Fostering and Adoption Panel and is currently one of the guest editors for a special issue of the British Journal of Social Work due for publication in the autumn.
Rosalind Harrison, Social Media and Content Marketer
Ros Harrison is a social media and video content specialist who supports schools and child-focused organisations in using online communications safely. Ros has 20 years of experience working with children and young people in both the public and third sectors, including facilitating safeguarding and CEOP training for local authority youth workers and developing domestic abuse awareness programmes for staff and pupils in primary settings. With 15 years of experience as a digital marketer, specialising in GDPR and compliance, across professional services and local authorities, she now helps schools develop effective management systems and robust safeguarding practices when representing themselves on social media through her business, Harrison Media Solutions.
Aileen Kane, Deputy CEO and COO, BSA Group
Aileen is Deputy CEO and COO of BSA Group, a group of membership associations comprising BAISIS (British Association of Independent Schools with International Students), BSA (Boarding Schools’ Association), IELA (The Inclusion and Equity Leadership Association), HIEDA (Health in Education Association), SACPA (Safeguarding and Child Protection Association), TIOB (The Institute of Boarding and BSA Legal Services Ltd, a subsidiary of BSA Group Services Ltd. BSA Group’s mission is to support excellence in boarding, safeguarding, inclusion and health education.
BSA Group serves 4,500 organisations and individuals in more than 50 countries. Within BSA is the BSA certified agent scheme, launched in 2020 and now representing over 100 certified agents.
Aileen is a seasoned marketing and communications strategist with extensive experience in driving business growth, brand positioning, and stakeholder engagement, including in the education sector. At BSA Group, she has led strategic marketing, business development, mergers and acquisitions, and organisational transformation with measurable impact. Her background spans marcomms, public affairs, and policy advocacy, where she has shaped legislative discussions and built partnerships with government bodies, including the DfE and the Home Office supporting best practice and high care standards notably across safeguarding and international student recruitment.
Dale Wilkins, Executive Director, Scotland/Wales and Accredited/Compliance
Dale joined the BSA during Summer 2017 with responsibility for safeguarding and standards. In July 2019 he also assumed responsibility for the BSA’s training programme, including both day seminars and accredited training courses. Dale leads on all safeguarding and inspection matters for the BSA, including managing the Commitment to Care Charter, the annual Safeguarding Conference, the Safeguarding Forum. He has also developed a process of BSA Accreditation for our overseas members.
For 31 years Dale was a boarding practitioner. After boarding positions at Norwich School and Tettenhall College, Dale became a Housemaster at Old Swinford Hospital in 1992, and was promoted to Deputy Head in 2007, and subsequently also DSL. He has also been a multi-agency trainer for the Dudley Safeguarding Children’s Board and has been closely involved in inspection in state and independent boarding since 2002. Dale had previously been a BSA course tutor since 1998 and developed the BSA Self-Assessment Toolkit.
Kevin Hartley, Senior Consultant for the NSPCC
