Sussex Social Change Hub
The Sussex Social Change Hub is a collective of academic experts from the Faculty of Social Sciences. We’re dedicated to strengthening relationships with organisations, governments, schools and charities through consultancy, training and tailored services.
Our mission
The Sussex Social Change Hub aims to advance social justice and equity by providing rigorous, ethical academic insights in social sciences.
We want to create a world where academic research continuously informs best practice, allowing organisations to more easily access high-level expertise. Integrity, ethics, kindness and authenticity are at the core of our interventions.
Read about the world-leading research taking place in the schools of Education and Social Work, Law, Politics and Sociology, and Global Studies. You can also join the Sussex Social Change Hub mailing list to receive the latest news.
CPD programme
Every year we design a unique programme of short CPD courses. These short non-accredited workshops are open to all professionals who find them relevant to their practice.
Our workshops are designed to bring our newest research to people working across the fields related to social justice, social care and helping professions and enhance professional practice. All participants will receive a certificate of completion after the workshop.
All our workshops can be booked through our website. Please read our CPD Terms and Conditions 2024 [PDF 58.22KB] for information about the cancellation policy.
If you would like more information about our CPD offer, or need assistance with your booking, please contact us at socialchangehub@sussex.ac.uk.
Courses
The following are the CPD courses coming up this academic year:
- 15 December 2026: Positive Psychology Approaches to Working with Vulnerable Young People: Insights Gained from Innovative Research
DATE: Tuesday 15 December 2026
TIME: 2pm-5pm
PRICE: £60 per person (single ticket), Buy 5 Get One Free £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Practitioners and those in helping professions working with young people or children
SPEAKER: Dr Clio Berry, Reader in Applied Mental Health Science
Led by a researcher in applied mental health, the workshop will explore the theoretical foundations of positive psychology and how key techniques can be packaged in engaging formats for use with vulnerable young people.
The workshop will be grounded in insights gained from innovative trials and participatory research studies involving vulnerable young people and children conducted in clinical and community settings.
Participants will be presented with key positive psychology techniques that can be integrated into everyday practice, helping practitioners to support young people to identify and build strengths, foster positive relationships, and develop a more hopeful and meaningful vision for their future.
- 19 January to 23 February 2027: Innovation in Social Care Settings: Moving from Idea to Actuality
DATES: Tuesday 19 January 2027, Tuesday 2 February 2027 and Tuesday 23 February 2027
TIME: 9:30am-11am
PRICE: £90 per ticket, or Buy 5 get one free £450 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Leaders, managers and supervisors working in social care, social work and other helping professions
SPEAKER: Prof Michelle Lefevre, Professor of Social Work
Are you a social care leader who is keen to introduce more beneficial and effective practice approaches for your setting?
Do you need some help in translating social innovation theory into practice realities?
This sequence of three x 1.5 hour online workshops are designed to help leaders in social work, social care and related third sector organisations start to plan the design and delivery of innovative new interventions or system features.
Drawing on key findings and practice tools from a four-year study of innovation, the workshops will cover the following issues:
• clarifying your service gap or inefficiency and why innovation might address it
• selecting the change process most suitable for your aims and resources
• ethical and practical principles to guide each stage of the innovation process
• building a data-informed case for change and getting buy-in
• determining your service’s local conditions and capacity for innovation
• uncovering wider system influences on innovation
• culture, leadership, trust and collaboration
• design, implementation and testing
• planning priority areas of action
Attendees would be expected to attend all three workshops as the learning builds from one session to the next.
Attendees will be provided with preparatory and follow-up reading for each session. This would be beneficial should they wish to progress their innovation ideas, but not mandatory.
Attendees will be offered planning tasks to complete in relation to their innovation ideas, should they wish to do so.
- 9 March 2027: Supporting families through a child’s first five years: key features of inclusive and effective early years and parenting services
DATE: Tuesday 9 March 2027
TIME: 10am-11:30am
PRICE: £30 per ticket, or Buy 5 get one free for £150 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Practitioners, managers, commissioners, policymakers, researchers, and others with an interest in improving outcomes for young children and their families.
SPEAKERS: Prof Michelle Lefevre, Professor of Social Work, Dr Jeri L. Damman, Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Care and Dr Ali Lacey, Research Fellow in Education
The first five years of a child's life are critical for development, wellbeing and long-term outcomes. Yet families' experiences of parenting support and early years services vary considerably, particularly where parents are facing multiple and interacting challenges such as poverty, poor mental health, domestic abuse, social isolation, or the effects of trauma.
The webinar will draw on emerging findings from ‘Flourish: Family Help in the Early Years’, a programme of research and practice development, funded by the NIHR through the ARC Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Moving beyond a focus on individual programmes, the team will explore the common elements of effective, inclusive and accessible support for families with diverse needs. The webinar will consider the underlying features of support and intervention that help parents engage with services, sustain participation, and achieve positive outcomes for themselves and their young children.
The webinar will consider how different approaches to family support are intended to work, including parenting programmes, relationship-based practice, trauma-informed approaches, strengths-based support, and community-based provision. The team will discuss the importance of context, relationships, trust, and responsiveness to family circumstances, and explore what parents themselves identify as helpful when seeking support.
Participants will gain insights into current evidence on supporting families during the early years, alongside practical considerations for service design, commissioning and delivery. The session will highlight opportunities to create more inclusive systems of support that recognise the complexity of family lives and promote equitable access to help during a child's crucial first five years.
- 23 March 2027: Re-Imagining Resistance with and for Young People
DATE: Tuesday 23 March
TIME: 10am-1pm
PRICE: £60 per ticket, or Buy 5 get One Free for £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Professionals working with young people across all sectors
SPEAKER: Prof Kristine Langhoff, Professor of Social Work
Resistance is a powerful and loaded word, open to interpretation and re-invention across time. It can be liberatory or destructive- sometimes both. However, when the term is used to describe young people (particularly outside of the context of political upheaval or a fight against injustice), it often signals frustration- by adults who do not want young people to resist the things they’ve told young people to say, be, or do. Here, resistance is a problem to be overcome and in the face of significant or serious harm, the pressure to convince young people to stop resisting builds.
What if young people’s resistance could be re-imagined entirely, as a force of vitality, health, and hope?
For the last five years, a multi-disciplinary research team used a range of arts-based methods (photography, film, movement, poetry, and textiles) to study resistance, as both a theoretical concept and a meaningful, tangible lived and felt experience among young people affected by sexual and interpersonal violence.
Led by Prof. Kristi Langhoff, they engaged an initial cohort of 20 young people and then worked with an additional 18 young people and 50 youth work and creative arts practitioners to turn their collective project into a practical resource for use with young people experiencing multiple forms of harm.
This workshop will share what the team has learned and provide space to consider how re-imagining resistance can help bring new language, avenues for participation, and collective advocacy to work with young people experiencing (or at risk of) harm.
- 6 April 2027: New approaches for thinking about children’s mental health
DATE: Tuesday 6 April 2027
TIME: 10am-1pm
PRICE: £60 per person (single ticket), Buy 5 Get One Free £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Professionals working with children and young people
SPEAKER: Dr Rachel Burr, Associate Professor in Education
Children and teenagers do not need to be experiencing a mental health crisis. In this workshop we will explore where our societal ideas about mental health have come from and examine contemporary cultural influences shaping children and teenagers’ experiences.
Informed by Rachel Burr’s extensive study, this workshop presents a case for practitioners to work in group settings, both to support those already presenting with mental health issues and to offer preventative care to those who might otherwise do so.
By the end of the session, it will be possible for members of the workshop to independently replicate and apply the approaches to their practice. The workshop will draw upon case examples from the study to illuminate the transformative nature of the group work process.
- 20 April 2027: Adolescents and Neuroscience: What you need to know about the adolescent brain
DATE: Tuesday 20 April 2027
TIME: 10am-1pm
PRICE: £60 per person (single ticket), Buy 5 Get One Free £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Social Workers and helping professionals working with young people
Speakers: Dr Liat Levita, Reader in Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience, and Prof Kristine Langhoff, Professor of Social Work
This 3-hour workshop will offer participants the opportunity to learn about the most recent developments in neuroscience related to the developing adolescent brain and how this knowledge can equip professionals to work more effectively with young people facing a range of risks and harm.
The session will be structured as a question and answer forum, where Kristine and Liat will bring together key contemporary issues in adolescent safeguarding, trauma-informed practice, and neuroscience. Professionals will have the opportunity to interact, ask questions, and apply learning whilst reflecting on their own practice throughout the session.
- 1 December 2026: Understanding Adolescent Stress: When Stress Helps and When It Harms
DATE: Tuesday 1 December 2026
TIME: 12pm-2pm
PRICE: Third sector professionals: £60 per person or Buy 5 Get 1 Free (6 tickets for £300); private sector professionals: £100 per person
DELIVERY: Online via Teams
TARGETED AT: Anyone who supports adolescents and young adults, including teachers, pastoral and safeguarding staff, youth workers, social workers, educational psychologists, NHS and mental health practitioners, family support workers, parents and carers, voluntary and community sector staff, and students in related disciplines.
SPEAKER: Dr Liat Levita, Reader in Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience
Adolescence is a period of substantial biological, psychological and social change. This interactive workshop explores what contemporary neuroscience can tell us about how adolescents experience and respond to stress, and how supportive relationships and environments can help foster resilience.
- 16 December 2026: Rewilding Leadership: Rethinking Leadership for an Age of Ecological, Social and Personal Crisis
DATE: Wednesday 16 December 2026
TIME: 11am-2pm
PRICE: £60 per person or Buy 5 Get 1 Free for £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Change-makers working in public services, charities and social enterprises interested in new thinking about leadership.
SPEAKER: Dr Gaurish Chawla, Associate Professor (Healthcare Leadership and Commissioning), Brighton and Sussex Medical School
This workshop introduces rewilding as a metaphor for leadership, exploring how organisations can move beyond control, optimisation and homogeneity towards diversity, emergence, resilience and regeneration.
- 9 February 2027: Beyond the Usual Adjustments: Understanding Autistic Cognition for Inclusive Practice
DATE: Tuesday 9 February 2027
TIME: 10am-1pm
PRICE: £60 per person or Buy 5 Get 1 Free for £300 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Social workers, social care practitioners and other professionals working with autistic adults or young people.
SPEAKER: Dr Sophie Anns, Associate Professor of Psychology
This interactive workshop explores autistic cognition, including memory, attention and learning, and examines how this knowledge can support more inclusive practice.
- 16 March 2027: Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension in the Primary School: From Research to Practice
DATE: Tuesday 16 March 2027
TIME: 2pm-5pm
PRICE: £60 per person or Buy 5 Get 1 Free (6 tickets for £300)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Primary school teachers, heads, literacy leads, school improvement advisors and teacher educators.
SPEAKER: Professor Jane Oakhill
This workshop focuses on the key components of reading comprehension and how to teach them, including vocabulary knowledge, inference making, comprehension monitoring and text structure.
- 12 April 2027: Raising Confident Children: A Workshop for Parents
DATE: Monday 12 April 2027
TIME: 2pm-4pm
PRICE: £40 per person
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Parents of children aged 2-12, professionals working with families and children.
SPEAKER: Sam Cartwright-Hatton, Professor of Clinical Child Psychology
This practical workshop draws on the Fearless Families programme to help parents build children's confidence, resilience and independence.
- 13 April to July 2027: People, Pets, and Practice: Exploring Human-Animal Inclusive Practice
DATE: Tuesday 13 April, Tuesday 11 May, Tuesday 15 June and Tuesday 13 July 2027
TIME: 10am-1pm
PRICE: £240 per person; Buy 5 Get One Free £1200 (6 tickets)
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Professionals working with children and young people.
SPEAKER: Rebecca Stephens, Associate Professor of Social Work
This webinar series explores the links between human and animal welfare and their implications for professional practice.
- 21 June 2027: The Science of Strengths and Virtues: Recognising and Optimising the Use of Your Strengths
DATE: Monday 21 June 2027
TIME: 4pm-6pm
PRICE: £40 per person
DELIVERY: Online via MS Teams
TARGETED AT: Coaches, educators, psychologists, wellbeing practitioners, managers, HR professionals, consultants and others interested in strengths-based approaches.
SPEAKER: Dr Rona Hart, Associate Professor in Applied Positive Psychology
This workshop introduces the VIA Character Strengths and Virtues framework and explores how strengths can be recognised, optimised and applied in personal and professional contexts.
Collaborate with us
Our academic experts work in a wide range of services with our diverse partners across the world.
We offer the following tailored opportunities:
- evaluations of policies, procedures and structures
- expert opinion and advice
- help with developing programs and products
- bespoke training
- regular Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses.
Contact socialchangehub@sussex.ac.uk to find out how we can help you. You can also join our mailing list to receive our newsletter.
Making Teaching of Reading Inclusive – a Sussex Social Change Hub case study
Jo Tregenza, a Reader in Primary Education and President Elect of the UKLA, developed an inclusive approach to the teaching of reading for students with physical and learning disabilities at our partner institution, Treloar. The team approached Jo to help consider how the school’s vision could be further developed through the teaching of reading. The ensuing project aimed to collaborate with staff, enhancing their understanding of research and pedagogy related to reading. The focus was on key concepts such as decoding, comprehension, and reading for pleasure, viewed through the lens of current research.
The goal was to utilize this understanding to work with staff in developing a pedagogical approach that could enhance the cross-curricular and integrated program of speaking and listening, reading, and writing. The framework developed with Jo has helped students demonstrate higher levels of enjoyment of literacy. Jo’s work significantly contributed to the school’s nomination for the NASS Innovation Awards 2023 for Developing an Innovative English Curriculum.
Latest news
Contact
If you have any queries, email socialchangehub@sussex.ac.uk.