Safer Organisations Conference
🏷️ From £235
🎧 DSLs, Safeguarding leads, Pastoral staff, HR teams, Governors
📍 Online
This conference aims to support safeguarding leaders and practitioners to understand emerging digital harms, review regulatory and technological responses, and translate learning into safer organisational policies and practice.
Programme:
09:30 – 09:45 Digital safeguarding at a critical juncture
This session will discuss big picture trends from AI harm generation to regulatory shifts and child and youth mental health impacts.
Speaker: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
09:45 – 10:30 Digital harms deep dive: tech-facilitated abuse and AI risks
This session will focus on how emerging technologies are changing the nature, scale, and concealment of abuse and what this means for organisational safeguarding responsibilities.
Chair: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
Speaker: Professor John Flood, Professor of Law and Society, Griffith University
10:30 – 10:45 BREAK
10:45 – 11:30 DBS checks and SCR
This session will focus DBS eligibility and how the Single Central Record (SCR) functions as a critical safeguarding mechanism and how poor understanding, weak ownership, or over-reliance on compliance can leave organisations unsafe.
Chair: Kate Hollyer, Executive Director (Legal), BSA Group & Director (Solicitor), BSA Legal
Speaker: Jordan Hayden, Regional Safeguarding Outreach Officer, DBS
11:30 – 11:45 BREAK
11:45 – 12:30 Practice, culture and organisational safeguarding: youth voice
The focus of this session is on embedding safeguarding into the culture and everyday practices of organisations, particularly around digital safety, while actively involving young people in shaping these safe spaces.
Chair: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
Speaker: Jessica Bondy, Founder of Words Matter
12:30 – 13:15 LUNCH
13:15 – 14:00 Why policies fail without reflective practice
The focus of this session is on embedding safeguarding into everyday workforce practice through supervision, reflective thinking, and relational approaches, rather than relying solely on written policies or procedural checklists.
Chair: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
Speaker: Dr Sylvia B Smith FHEA
14:00 – 14:15 BREAK
14:15 – 15:00 Cultural competence and trauma-informed practice
This session will focus on why cultural humility and trauma-informed practice are critical to creating safe, inclusive organisations where individuals feel understood, respected, and protected. It will explore how these approaches strengthen safeguarding by recognising lived experiences, addressing systemic barriers, and reducing harm.
Chair: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
Speaker: Kellie Strachan, The Athena Programme.
15:00 – 15:15 Break
15:15 – 16:30 Why people don’t disclose and why organisations miss it: what modern neuroscience adds to organisational safety
We discuss attachment, trauma and organisational safety, with focus on modern neuroscience.
Chair: Mariya Ali, Director of SACPA, and Director of Safeguarding, BSA Group
Speakers: Dr John Gibson, DDP Practitioner, Angus Burnett, Senior leader in children’s services and education, Nick Pidgeon, Social worker and educational consultant
16:30 Conference close
Speakers:
Dr Mariya Ali, Director, SACPA
Mariya Ali is Director of SACPA and an internationally recognised safeguarding and child protection expert. With over two decades’ multidisciplinary experience in legal, academic, advisory, and leadership roles, she is strongly committed to advancing child rights and welfare. Formerly Deputy Minister in the Maldives, she led national reforms in child protection policy and legislation. Internationally, she has worked with UNICEF, Save the Children, and Lumos Foundation on child sexual abuse, exploitation, and systems reform across South Asia and beyond. An academic and practitioner, Mariya has published widely and specialises in trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and systems-based safeguarding approaches.
Jordan Hayden, Regional Safeguarding Outreach Officer, DBS
Professor John Flood, Professor of Law and Society, Griffith University
Professor John Flood specialises in technology and society, the sociology of the legal profession, globalisation of law, and the impact of AI and blockchain on legal systems and regulation. His work spans legal ethics, large law firms, legal technology, and cross-border law making, and he has published five books and more than 175 articles, chapters, and reports. He has held academic chairs in four countries and received major international fellowships, including the Exxon Fellowship in Ethics at Indiana University Bloomington, the Jean Monnet Fellowship at European University Institute, and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in the UK. He is currently a Research Associate at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and Adjunct Professor of Law at Queensland University of Technology. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Alongside his academic work, Professor Flood advises law firms, regulators, and legal technology start ups internationally, most recently serving as advisor on law, society, and technology to Larrg, an Australian legal tech start up focused on access to justice. His research and commentary have been featured in outlets including the Financial Times and Australian Financial Review, and he serves on multiple UK research peer review colleges and editorial boards, including as General Editor of the journal Legal Ethics.
Angus Burnett, Senior leader in children’s services and education
Angus is a senior leader with extensive experience supporting children, families and organisations, and is committed to understanding how people learn, grow and function in complex environments. His career spans residential care, education, CAMHS, social work and the charity sector. Across these settings he’s led teams, shaped safeguarding systems, delivered service improvements and supported organisational development. His approach blends clarity, empathy and strategic thinking, with a focus on helping individuals and teams work with more insight and confidence. Angus currently works at The Mulberry Bush Organisation.
Nick Pidgeon, Social worker and educational consultant
Nick has worked in residential childcare, and as a social worker, a social work manager, and a social work inspector. He became the second consultant this side of the Atlantic to the Residential Child Care Project at Cornell University, New York. For over 30 years he worked with the project contributing to writing and reviewing training programmes and delivering these programmes for the university. He has been an independent consultant for over 20 years and has delivered training and consultancy throughout Britain and in five other countries on three continents – America, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Russia.
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 and serves as Vice Chair of a Fostering and Adoption Panel.
Dr John Gibson, DDP Practitioner
Dr Gibson is a social worker by primary qualification and holds a Doctorate in Professional Studies from Middlesex University. He is Certified Practitioner in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. He worked in residential childcare as a home manager for twenty years Barnardos and Belfast Central Mission. He was consultant to the Residential Child Care Project at Corell University NY. He lives in County Donegal, Ireland where he a private practice in supporting foster cares and children. He is also Reflective Practitioner Group Facilitator for two residential services providers in Ireland.
Jessica Bondy, Founder of Words Matter
Jessica Bondy is the Founder of Words Matter, the charity on a mission to end verbal abuse of children by adults. She spent over 20 years in communications supporting some of the world’s leading organisations and brands and coaching and mentoring young people to help them realise their potential.Jessica founded Words Matter as a result of her own personal experience and that of the people she coached who had been so impacted by the words they had heard when growing up.
Words Matter (www.wordsmatter.org) was launched in September 2023 and focuses on three things: research, raising awareness and collaboration.
Kellie Strachan, The Athena Programme
Kellie is an experienced social work professional with over 24 years of frontline practice across criminal justice, child protection, fostering, and therapeutic support services. Qualified in England with a BSc (Hons) and Diploma in Social Work from the University of Huddersfield, she has spent most of her career in Scotland. Her work has included offender rehabilitation, complex child protection, foster care support, and trauma-informed practice. Kellie is passionate about understanding the long-term impact of trauma and early adversity, and now delivers engaging, research-informed training to social workers, teachers, foster carers, and multi-agency professionals across the UK.
Kate Hollyer, Partner and Director, BSA Group Legal Services Ltd
Kate Hollyer is Executive Director (Legal) of BSA Group and Director of BSA Legal Services Ltd. A qualified solicitor with over 14 years’ experience in UK immigration law, she advises and supports members on a full range of immigration matters. Before joining BSA in 2022, Kate was Partner and Head of Department at a leading UK law firm, where she built extensive expertise in complex immigration cases. Since 2014, Kate has lived in boarding houses alongside her Housemaster husband, giving her a unique, first-hand perspective on the challenges and opportunities of boarding life.
