Decisions, Assessment, Risk and Evidence in Social Work
6th Biennial International Symposium
Tuesday 30 June to Wednesday 1 July 2020
Dunadry Hotel, Antrim
DARE 2020
DARE 2020
DARE 2020: This sixth DARE symposium builds on the fifth symposium in July 2018 which brought together over 150 delegates from 20 countries including senior practitioners, managers, policy makers, researchers, regulators and social workers in education and training.
Registration Now Open
Registration Options Before 31 March After 31 March Full Conference Rate (including dinner) £155 £165 Premium Rate (excluding dinner) £125 £135 Single day (excluding dinner) £70 £75 Dinner only £30 Scope
This biennial DARE conference series brings together researchers, managers, educators, policy makers, regulators and experienced practitioners to share developments on the related topics of:
- Professional judgement including cognitive heuristics, bias and use of knowledge.
- Decision & assessment processes with clients, families, professionals and organisations.
- Assessment tool development including diagnosis and statistical prediction of harm.
- Risk assessment, communication and management, including legal aspects and risk taking.
- Ethical, emotional and contextual aspects of decision making, assessment and risk.
- Learning & managing decisions, assessment & risk including supervision, education & training.
- Evidence synthesis, knowledge transfer & implementation science for practice & policy.
Aims
The DARE conference series aims to support the development of professional knowledge and skills for the benefit of clients, families and societies by promoting research, organisation development, knowledge transfer and teaching initiatives
DARE is supported by the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences
Please note that this Programme is draft and subject to change.
Plenary Speakers
Professor Karen Broadhurst
Professor Karen Broadhurst works at the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Child and Family Justice Research which includes researchers from the disciplines of social work, social policy, law, criminology, statistics and computing. Karen is Society Lead for the Data Science Institute at Lancaster University. In partnership with the SAIL Databank at Swansea University and with a Nuffield grant of £2.18M, she leads a team of researchers analysing family justice-systems in England and Wales using single and linked large-scale administrative datasets. This is a central part of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory for England and Wales. First outputs from the project team concerning new-born babies and infants (The “Born into Care” series), which are shaping national policy and practice. Karen’s recent work on the scale and pattern of women’s repeat appearances in public law proceedings (child protection cases) in the family court in England has led to major central government investment in a range of prevention initiatives in England and Wales, as well as further afield. Karen is collaborating with colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Western Australia, the Australian Catholic University and Peking University on studies of child protection.
Professor Pascal Bastian
Pascal Bastian is Professor of Educational Science in the field of social pedagogy at the University of Landau in Germany. He holds a Diploma and a PhD in educational science. In 2017 he obtained the teaching authorisation (habilitation) in the field of educational science with the habilitation thesis: ‘Social pedagogical judgement and decision-making’. His research focuses on judgement and decision-making in social work; actuarial- and algorithm-based assessment tools; digitalisation and standardisation in child protection and child welfare services; evidence based social work; and professionalisation. With colleagues he has organized two international conferences on the topic of judgement and decision-making in social work. Most recently, together with Prof. Dr. Mark Schrödter, he conducted research in an ethnographic study funded by the German Research Foundation on professional decision-making in child protection during unannounced home visits.
Dr Emily Putnam-Hornstein
Emily Putnam-Hornstein PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and Director of the Children’s Data Network, a university-agency collaborative focused on the linkage and analysis of administrative records. She maintains a research appointment at the University of California at Berkeley: California Child Welfare Indicators Project, and is serving as a researcher-in-residence at California’s Health and Human Services Agency, helping to steward state-wide data initiatives.
A leading researcher in the field of child maltreatment and child welfare systems, Emily is recognized for her expertise in the integration of cross-sector data to inform children’s policies and programmes. Her current research focuses on the use of risk prediction modelling to provide insight into where scarce public resources may be most efficiently targeted for the greatest impact, and to improve decision-making at the front-end of child protection systems. Emily graduated from Yale with a BA in psychology, received her MSW from Columbia University, and earned her PhD in Social Welfare from University of California at Berkeley. Prior to returning to graduate school, she worked as a child welfare caseworker in New York City.
Call for Abstracts
Abstracts are invited for Oral Presentations and Poster Presentations addressing any aspect of the conference themes. Abstracts should outline the context, methods and findings - of the study, research synthesis, or innovative service development or teaching activity - together with a generalizable message.
Oral Presentations
Presentations will be a maximum of 20 minutes and will be managed as parallel sets, with each set on a linked theme followed by discussion.
Poster Presentations
- One sheet, portrait (vertical) format, not exceeding 90 cm wide by 130 cm high (A0 size).
- Pins will be provided for you to fix you poster to a board.
- Title and author(s) of the poster should be at the top of the poster in bold lettering.
- Participants from Northern Ireland who would like assistance in producing a poster are invited to contact Dr Campbell Killick, Lecturer in Social Work, Ulster University, at c.killick@ulster.ac.uk
Further information
Abstracts should be emailed to Prof Brian Taylor, Professor of Social Work at bj.taylor@ulster.ac.uk by Friday 31 January 2020 with copy to the conference secretary Mrs Sharon Lucas at dare@ulster.ac.uk using the template.
Abstracts will only be accepted where at least one named author attends the conference. Preference will be given to abstracts:
- with a clear link to the conference themes;
- with clear relevance to social work practice, management, regulation, teaching or research; and
- based on empirical data (research, service evaluation, training evaluation, professional audit; etc.) although exceptional theoretical abstracts may be accepted.
Preference for Oral Presentations will be given to abstracts that are likely to be of interest to a wide cross-section of the audience. Where the Scientific Committee declines an abstract for Oral Presentation it may offer Poster Presentation instead. Decisions will be made by Friday 21 February 2020. The conference early-bird rate closes Friday 27 March 2020.
Further conference details, including information on the programme, registration and fees, are being added incrementally to our website www.ulster.ac.uk/dare or contact the Mrs Sharon Lucas dare@ulster.ac.uk .
Sponsored by the Health and Social Care Board for Northern Ireland and Ulster University School of Applied Social & Policy Sciences.
Scholarships
There are two Scholarships to cover attendance costs at the Decisions, Assessment, Risk and Evidence in Social Work Sixth Biennial International Symposium in June-July 2020. The Scholarships are available to participants from lower-income European countries, as defined by the European Social Work Research Association. Further information about Scholarships is available from: Dr Andrew Whittaker of the ESWRA Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group.
Location of Conference
Accommodation is available on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis at a conference discount rate (£85.00) at the Dunadry Hotel if you indicate that you are attending this conference.
NB: this cannot be booked online due to discounted rate – please either telephone 0044 (0)28 9443 4343 or email reservations@dunadry.com
Address
2 Islandreagh Dr,
Dunadry,
Antrim,
BT41 2HAOther Accommodation in the Local Area
Hilton Templepatrick Hotel & Country Club
Castle Upton Estate
Templepatrick
BT39 0DDTel: 028 9443 5500
www.hilton.co.uk/TemplepatrickDistance 0.5 miles (approx. 13 min walk)
The Templeton Hotel
882 Antrim Road
Templepatrick
BT39 0AHTel: 028 9443 2984
https://www.templetonhotel.com/Distance 2.2 miles (taxi)
Guest house accommodation available in the local area includes:
Beechmount Farm B&B
30 Seven Mile Straight
Muckamore
Antrim
BT41 4QHTel: 028 9446 7110
https://discovernorthernireland.com/Beechmount-Farm-Muckamore-Antrim-P20356/
Distance 1.7 miles (taxi)
Keef Halla Country House
20 Tully Road
Nutts Corner
Crumlin
BT29 4SW
Tel: 028 9082 5491
www.keefhalla.comDistance 6.2 miles (taxi)
Temple Taxis: 028 9443 3333 or Aldergrove Taxis: 028 9442 2226
Tours and Attractions
Tours of Belfast
Theatres in Belfast
Attractions in NI
Previous Conferences
DARE 2018
The fifth DARE symposium in July 2018 brought together about 160 delegates from 22 countries (across four continents), including senior practitioners, managers, policy makers, researchers, regulators and social workers in education and training.
Plenary Speakers
- Professor Haluk Soydan, Research Professor of Social Work, University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, USA
- Professor Rami Benbenishty, Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work, Bar Ilan University, Israel,
- Professor Brian Littlechild, Research Lead, Department of Nursing & Social Work, University of Hertfordshire
DARE 2016
The fourth DARE symposium in July 2016 brought together about 130 delegates from 12 countries including social workers in practice, management, policy, regulation, and education and training.
Plenary Speakers
- Mandeep K. Dhami, PhD, Professor of Decision Psychology at Middlesex University, London.
- John D. Fluke, PhD, Associate Director of System Research and Evaluation at the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
- Gerd Gigerenzer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin.
DARE 2014
The third DARE symposium in July 2014 brought together about 120 delegates from 10 countries including social workers in practice, management, policy, regulation, and education and training.
Plenary Speakers
- Professor Eileen Gambrill, Hutto Patterson Professor of Child and Family Studies, University of California at Berkeley, USA, internationally recognized for her work on critical thinking, decision making and related ethical issues, and evidence based practice.
- Dr Martin Webber, Reader in Social Work, University of York, UK, well-known for his passion for rigorous research in mental health social work, including application of evidence to practice decisions and professional knowledge-creation process.
- Mr David Carson, Visitor, School of Law, University of Southampton, UK, an international speaker on the interface between law and risk in human services including the management of risk and professional decisions in organizations.
DARE 2012
The second DARE symposium in July 2012 brought together about 100 delegates from nine countries including social workers in practice, management, policy, regulation, and education and training.
Plenary Speakers
- Professor Hazel Kemshall, De Montfort University Leicester who has published widely on risk assessment and management with adult client groups including criminal justice.
- Professor Aron Shlonsky, University of Toronto who has published widely on risk assessment and predicting harm in child welfare, and on evidence based practice in social work.
Dare 2010
The first DARE symposium in July 2010 brought together about 70 delegates including social workers in practice, management, policy, regulation, and education and training.
Plenary Speakers
- Professor Jill Manthorpe, Director of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London, who has undertaken research and published widely on adult safeguarding and risk in social care.
- Mr Martin Calder, MA, CQSW, private consultant of Calder Training & Consultancy Ltd, who has undertaken developmental work with organisations and published widely on risk and assessment in child protection.