When Children Speak: Attuning to the Child's Voice, Responding with Adult Wisdoms

This one-day, in-person CPD workshop brings together perspectives from mediation, psychology, systemic practice and child mental health.

Led by Katy Harris, Prof. Ben Hine, Penny Ruth Willis, and Lucy Morrison-Childs, the day offers a rare opportunity to step back and ask, in the context of conflict, what we are actually hearing when we speak with children?

Across family justice, therapeutic and support systems, professional assumptions and processes often require children to provide clarity beyond their developmental capabilities and create pressures to accept some of the children’s words, behaviours and expressed views at face value, whilst overlooking others. Many qualified, legitimate, and authorised professionals working directly with children still feel undertrained and deskilled.

This workshop does not offer a model or a fixed approach. Instead, it offers a structured, reflective space to discuss and explore:

• How children’s communications are shaped by context

• How interpretation is formed across different professional roles

• Where misunderstanding can arise, even within well-intentioned practice and how those misunderstandings can influence outcomes for children and families

• New, cross-disciplinary responses to children’s voices.

  
  

Through shared discussion and case-based exploration, the day brings together different lenses without reducing them to a single way of working.

Participants are invited to think together about how children are understood and how responsibility is held within adult systems.

Who should attend

You may be a family mediator, Family lawyer, CAFCASS and court professional, therapists, psychologist or similar associated professional working with with complex family dynamics and systems.

Important positioning

Our expectation is that strategies and methods will emerge through collaborative dialogue. This workshop does not provide training/ accreditation in child-inclusive mediation practice, or safeguarding decision-making frameworks.  Its purpose is to deepen understanding, not to teach a specific method.