CORC Forum 2024

Join this year's CORC Forum, a half-day online event for research, mental health, and education professionals to expand your knowledge of mental health wellbeing outcomes for children and young people.

About the CORC Forum

The CORC Forum is CORC's flagship event each year, which runs for half a day and with a large amount of attendees. It brings together members and colleagues from the research, mental health and education sector, featuring inspirational speakers, exciting topics and discussions. It is the ideal event to expand your knowledge of mental health and wellbeing outcomes for children and young people, based on experience and research. Reflections from last year's event can be found here.

This year the CORC Forum takes places on Thursday 21 November 2024, 09:30 to 13:00.

Attendance is free to CORC members, with a fee for non-members. Many of you attend each year, and we of course welcome anyone who hasn’t been before too. This will be an online event, making it easily accessible to those across the UK and in other countries, with opportunity for networking during the event.

CORC members will need to book their free place(s) by emailing corc@annafreud.org.

2024 CORC Forum speakers

Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou, Strategic Co-Lead and Programme Director, Anna Freud and University College London

We look forward to welcoming Georgia as our keynote speaker. The title of her talk is: 'Emotional triggers and associated burdens experienced by adolescent school pupils with diagnoses of ADHD, autism or both'. Georgia will explain the importance of a neurodiversity affirming and informed approach to measuring emotion regulation in neurodivergent students and the concept of resilience. She will also share development of a new self-report questionnaire co-designed with young people with a diagnosis of autism and/or ADHD – the My Emotions in School Index (MESI).

The event will also feature presentations from:

Sohila Sawhney, Senior Research and Evaluation Manager at Barnardo's

The title of Sohila's talk is '"Multiple and complex." The journey of developing a new outcomes framework at Barnardos'. Barnardo's are a CORC member, and one of the oldest and largest children charities in the UK. Sohila will set out the key challenges, opportunities and lessons learnt in leading the organisation on a journey to being able to measure and communicate the difference they make, by designing, developing and implementing a new outcomes framework.

Francesca Speakman, Programme Manager for #BeeWell in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Francesca will speak on 'Learning from #BeeWell in Greater Manchester; using data to inform regional systems and make young people’s wellbeing everybody’s business'. Fran will share how insights, alongside other intelligence, is forming priorities and strategies in Greater Manchester and mobilising the regional system to make young people's wellbeing everyone's business.

Roisin McEvoy, Head of Schools Training and National Programmes at Anna Freud

Roisin's talk will be on 'Belonging, connectedness and school attendance'. This will include evidence about school non-attendance and school connectedness, the relationship between emotions, wellbeing and mental health and attendance at school, and the role of school culture, systems and staff in helping children to feel safe and happy to attend.

Rachael Stemp, Participation in Research Officer at CORC and Evidence Based Practice Unit, Anna Freud

Rachel will lead a discussion alongside peer researchers and young research advisory group members to explore what meaningful participation means in the context of mental health. The title of her talk is: 'Why young people get involved in mental health research: lessons from recent projects' which will draw on examples from the Kailo project.

Nick Tait, Programme Manager at CORC

Nick will consider and explore the latest research and innovation in understanding and improving child and youth mental health outcomes from across the CORC network and beyond, over the recent year, and on-going. The title of his talk is: 'Developments from the Child Outcomes Research Consortium'.

Agenda

9:30–9:35: Welcome and introduction – Kate Dalzell, Head of Evidence-Led Improvement, Anna Freud

9:35–10:15: Emotional triggers and associated burdens experienced by adolescent school pupils with diagnoses of ADHD, autism or both – Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou, Strategic Co-Lead and Programme Director, Anna Freud and University College London

Georgia will explain the importance of a neurodiversity affirming and informed approach to measuring emotion regulation in neurodivergent students and the concept of resilience, and report on the development of a new self-report questionnaire co-designed with young people with a diagnosis of autism and/or ADHD – the My Emotions in School Index (MESI).

10:15–10:35: Developments from the Child Outcomes Research Consortium – Nick Tait, Programme Manager, CORC, Anna Freud

Nick will consider and explore the latest research and innovation in understanding and improving child and youth mental health outcomes from across the CORC network and beyond.

10:35–11:05: Why young people get involved in mental health research: lessons from the recent projects – Rachael Stemp, Participation in Research Officer, CORC, Anna Freud

Rachael will lead a discussion alongside peer researchers and young research advisory group members to explore what meaningful participation means in the context of mental health. Drawing on examples from the Kailo project, the discussion will consider what motivates young people to get involved in participation, and what matters to them.

11:05–11:20: Break

11:20–11:50: Learning from #BeeWell in Greater Manchester; using data to inform regional systems and make young people’s wellbeing everybody’s business – Francesca Speakman, #BeeWell Programme Manager, Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Fran will share how #BeeWell insights, alongside other intelligence, is forming priorities and strategies in Greater Manchester, mobilising the regional system to make young people’s wellbeing, everybody’s business.

11:50–12:20: “Multiple and complex” – the journey of developing a new outcomes framework at Barnardo’s – Sohila Sawhney, Senior Manager of Research and Evaluation, Barnardo’s

Barnardo’s is one of the oldest and largest children’s charities in the UK. Providing around 800 services in pursuit of the mission to “change childhoods, change lives” the charity reaches some 350,000 children, young people and families every year. In this session, Sohila will set out the key challenges, opportunities and lessons learned in leading the organisation on a journey to being able to measure and communicate the difference we make, by designing, developing and implementing a new outcomes framework.

12:20 – 12:50: Belonging, connectedness and school attendance – Roisin McEvoy, Head of Schools Training and National Programmes, Anna Freud

Roisin will discuss the relationship between emotions, wellbeing and mental health and attendance at school; share evidence about school non-attendance and school connectedness; and explore the role of school culture, systems and staff in helping children feel safe and happy to attend.

12:50–13:00: Closing comments

Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou
Georgia is a neurodivergent academic who has a PhD in Developmental Psychology and Mental Health, is the Founder of the University College London (UCL) Group in Research in Relationships and an Associate Professor at UCL. She is the Co-Strategic Lead and Programme Director of National Autism Trainer Programme at Anna Freud, commissioned by NHS England, which aims to improve service delivery across inpatient, community and youth justice mental health services.
She has 20 years’ experience working with autistic people and their family members and has felt the benefits of involving them at the heart of clinical and educational decision making. She has been holding therapeutic and non-therapeutic consultation roles in educational and clinical settings. Georgia has also led national and international short courses for mental health practitioners working in educational and NHS systems with young people with atypical development.
She is passionate about working with marginalised groups, service users, scholar activists and mental health services to facilitate service transformation and advance mental health practice through better cross-agency collaboration, translational research and service user participation.
Sohila Sawhney
Sohila is an applied social researcher. She joined Barnardo’s in 2017 having worked in research roles in other charities including Samaritans and Addaction (now We Are With You). She currently leads on developing a new outcomes framework, and is working towards helping Barnardo’s make better use of research and evaluation in decision-making. She is responsible for setting research priorities and ensuring high standards of quality and ethics are maintained across research and evaluation in the organisation.
Francesca Speakman
Fran oversees all aspects of the #BeeWell programme, including delivering the survey to 63,000 young people, facilitating action with partners across local government, health and VCSFE and engaging directly with young people to ensure their voice is central to all decisions. Fran has over 10 years’ experience working in a variety of public health roles, including managing commissioned healthy weight services, service development and supporting complex families. Fran also led the Children and Young People portfolio of work for GM Moving; aiming to strategically influence systems to improve the physical activity levels across GM. Fran has also been a Guide Leader for almost 20 years.
Roisin McEvoy
Roisin is the Head of Schools Training and National Programmes at Anna Freud. She leads a team of education and clinical experts who deliver professional learning and national programmes around whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing, as well as a range of specialist courses for school staff. Her previous experience includes more than two decades as a teacher and school leader in London secondary schools and a curriculum development role for an academy trust.
Rachael Stemp
Rachel joined CORC in August 2023 as our Participation in Research Officer. Prior to this, she worked on various research projects exploring out-of-home care, including fostering, residential children’s homes, and domestic servitude and slavery. She is also a trained social worker, and is studying for a PhD, exploring the experiences of young people who live in supported lodgings. Rachael is passionate about ensuring research is as accessible and inclusive as possible, and equipping others to coproduce their research and services with young people.
Nick Tait
As Programme Manager for CORC, Nick works directly with members as well as on a range of projects in collaboration with CORC partner organisations. Nick joined CORC after working in schools, first as a teacher and then as head teacher of a large London primary school. Through his work with children he saw the importance of effective support for children’s mental health and wellbeing and worked with partner organisations to develop practice in school. He is particularly interested in the wellbeing of the most vulnerable children.
For the live training segments, we'll be using Zoom. Please ensure your device meets Zoom's system requirements before enrolling. You can test your equipment at Zoom.us/test before the training to address any technical issues. 
For self-guided learning, materials, and homework, we'll use Blackboard Learn which is compatible with most devices. For optimal access, please use Google Chrome.

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