The programme, which will take place across four demonstration sites in England and two in Scotland, will be independently evaluated. ThemPra will support the fostering services at Aberlour Fostering and Orkney Islands Council ( which are a joint demonstration site), Edinburgh City Council, Staffordshire County Council, as well as Capstone Foster Care (South West) Ltd. The programme is currently well under way and is already inspiring many foster carers and social workers in the sites. You can find out more about the programme on the official Head, Heart, Hands website and also read The Fostering Network's summary paper.

This has included 9-day social pedagogy courses for professionals across the entire organisation, regular recall days for course participants, 3-day social pedagogical leadership courses for existing and potential leaders at Sycamore and Aberlour, a joint EU Youth in Action project, and involvement in ThemPra's EU Leonardo Mobility project. Aberlour's Fostering Service, 'Sycamore Families', is also working closely together with us as part of the Fostering Network's 'Head, Heart, and Hands Project'. For a new early intervention project in Dundee, run collaboratively by Aberlour in partnership with three other Scottish charities, we facilitated a 9-day social pedagogy course for the entire team.

That social pedagogy has had a profound effect on the culture at Sycamore is undeniable. Stevie Rogers, one of our course participants, summed up what social pedagogy means to him: 'Eureka, I think I have got it. Is Social Pedagogy going to your place of work, or indeed, approaching everyday-life with a passion, a sense of adventure and, despite the difficulties, HAVE FUN doing it. That's my latest guess but I will continue to explore and spread the word'. Another course participant and now a social pedagogy champion in the service, Malcolm Christie, recently submitted 'Social Pedagogy - recapture the joy of what we do' as an idea at the SSSC/IRISS Workforce of the Future Challenge - it made its way into the top 12 ideas! The impact of the initial course was independently evaluated by Ian Milligan from SIRCC, and his insightful report can be found here ...

Our contribution so far has been to facilitate the introductory module on social pedagogy, a 6-day experiential learning course. We are in the process of supporting internal trainers towards delivering this module on their own. This is also complemented by further modules currently under development, which will lead towards a BA qualification. For further details please read Kibble's workshop presentation at the CELCIS conference 2012.

The project aimed to create a hybrid between the whole-systems approach we developed for Essex and the DfE pilot projects managed by TCRU, in which Staffordshire was involved as a pilot site. Since then we've been providing 9-day courses for staff, team development days, a leadership course and strategic development work. You can find out more about the project's success in an article by The Guardian.

With several of its residential managers having participated in our previous courses for SIRCC and senior managers keen interest in developing social pedagogy within a Scottish context, we're really excited about this project and hope to continue the partnership with residential services. Michael Greig, one of the course participants, has recently published a great example of how he used social pedagogy in practice. You can access it here. Together with a few other colleagues, Michael has set up Edinburgh Momentum as an initiative to keep promoting social pedagogy within and outwith Edinburgh.

So far we have facilitated two awareness-raising seminars and two 9-day courses with participants from a range of organisations. CELCIS also part-funded and evaluated our 9-day course with Orkney Islands Council. The interest in Scotland has been overwhelming, and we're hoping to contribute to developing a Scottish social pedagogy that builds on similar existing traditions.

The course was independently evaluated by Evelyn Vrouwenfelder from CELCIS. The report, available here, shows a great insight into how participants have developed social pedagogy within their practice. One participant stated: 'I am working with a boy who has attention difficulties in the classroom and he talked to me for a good half an hour and showing me web pages of boats and saying he’s a skipper and what you have to wear, how you have to move etc... And I said to him, ‘You’ve got other people’s lives in your hands and its very important.’ And I use that in talking to other people, teachers - who tend to talk very negatively about him - and explain a bit more about who he is and what he does. And they are really surprised but it changes their perspective on him.' (p.2)

The report also highlighted the quality of the social pedagogy course: 'We can conclude that the training has had a significant and substantial impact on every participant. Each person interviewed or observed during the evaluation process was able to indicate how the training had influenced their practice and their inter-agency working - albeit in different ways and at different levels - and was able to give evidence for this.' (p.39).

Independent long-term research by Kate Skinner and Mark Smith is due to be published later in 2012. In the meantime we've been continuing to support Walsall through ongoing reflective development session for the teams. Walsall will also take part in our 2013 Leonardo Mobility project.

In the winter 2010/2011 we ran another course for Belfast with 2 new homes, and their short-term residential homes undertook two 6-day courses the following year. We are also continuing to be in dialogue to support the systemic development of social pedagogy within the organisation, for instance through regular team development sessions.

In early 2012 we facilitated a feasibility visit between a Danish, Scottish, and English children's home, with 2 young people from each home participating to flesh out ideas for a Youth in Action project. During a sunny weekend in late January, the participants came together in Oxfordshire to get to know each other and develop ideas for future intercultural dialogue. To get to know each other we undertook outdoor group challenges (for example an obstacle course, experiential learning activities, a night walk and a bonfire) as well as some indoor acticities that had a stronger focus on teasing out the children's ideas about getting in contact with each other and what a potential youth exchange and its creative evaluation could look like. The style of all activities was largely underpinned by an informal character, which was very much appreciated by the participants. Apart from presenting the idea of the project, proposing the programme of the meeting and leading the activities, the group was constantly involved in shaping the process of the visit and thoroughly enjoyed the get-together. We are hoping to build on this by securing further funding for a youth exchange.