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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 half-day non-accredited workshops are open to all professionals who find them relevant to their practice. All participants will receive a certificate of attendance upon completing the course.

The courses will all take place online on Microsoft Teams.

Each session can be booked individually through our online shop linked under each session. For group bookings, please contact us at socialchangehub@sussex.ac.uk.

See also CPD Terms and Conditions 2024 [PDF 58.22KB].

Courses

The following are the CPD courses still to take place this year:

• Adolescents and Neuroscience: What you need to know about the adolescent brain

  Tuesday 17 March 2026 / 10am-1pm / via Teams

  Fee: £50 per person

  Delivery: Online via MS Teams

  Targeted at: Social workers and helping professionals working with young people

  Delivered by: and

  This 3-hour workshop gives 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.

  It will be structured as a question and answer forum at which Kristine and Liat will bring together key contemporary issues in adolescent safeguarding, trauma-informed practice, and neuroscience. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and apply learning, whilst reflecting on their own practice throughout the session.

• Reflective Practice for Social Work: Navigating emotions, power and ethical challenges

  Tuesday 21 April 2026 / 10am-1pm / via Teams

  Fee: £50 per person

  Delivery: Online via MS Teams

  Targeted at: Social Work professionals and people working in helping professions

  Delivered by:

  This workshop explores reflective practice as a tool for navigating the emotional complexity, power dynamics, and ethical challenges inherent in social work. Participants will explore how to apply reflection models in supervision, address systemic inequalities, foster anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice and recognise, process, and learn from emotions in their work.

  Through case studies, group activities, and practical tools, the session emphasises emotional resilience, critical thinking, and strategies for challenging structural power imbalances. The workshop offers a safe, supportive space for practitioners to share experiences, learn collaboratively, and strengthen their capacity for ethical, resilient, and emotionally intelligent practice. You will leave with actionable steps to embed reflection into daily practice and promote equity, ethical decision-making and professional growth.

• The Inner Work of Outer Change: Embodied social justice practice

  Workshop is spread across three days: 28 April, 5 May and 12 May / 2-3.30pm / via Teams

  Fee: £75 per person

  Delivery: Online via MS Teams

  Targeted at: Practitioners and leaders across all sectors committed to social justice and social change.

  Delivered by:

  Social justice work demands navigating complexity, holding contradictions and remaining present with suffering while maintaining clarity and compassion. This series of workshops explores how tending to internal states directly influences capacity for external change.

  Through accessible psychoeducation, embodied practices and witnessing in small groups, you will learn to recognise your nervous system states and practice accessing regulation when under pressure, reconnecting with the values that drive your work. You will then explore how physiological state shapes the stories we tell about ourselves and our work, and how those stories, in turn, influence our state. The final session will bring you into direct contact with the double binds inherent in social justice practice, discovering how staying regulated in the face of impossible choices opens new possibilities that transcend either/or thinking.

  Each session deepens your capacity to tend to your internal experience as a resource for sustained, values-led engagement in systems change.

• Applying Girlhood Theory to Practice

  Tuesday 12 May 2026 / 10am-1pm / via Teams

  Fee: £50 per person

  Delivery: Online via MS Teams

  Targeted at: Social workers and youth workers, teacher and educators, residential workers, family support workers and other professions working with children and young people.

  Delivered by:

  This CPD workshop will introduce professionals to current theoretical work on girlhoods and consider how they could be used to support practice with girls in social work and related fields.

  In this 3-hour interactive session you will:

  • learn about current theories of girlhood and discuss recent research findings on working with girls
  • explore the meanings and feelings linked to girlhood and consider how these might affect professional responses
  • understand how girlhood theory could be used to support reflective practice with girls.

• Talking about the British Empire and its Afterlives

  Monday 1 June 2026 / 2-4pm / via Teams

  Fee: £40 per person

  Delivery: Online via MS Teams

  Targeted at: Teachers, journalists, community workers and heritage professionals.

  Delivered by:

  In this workshop, led by a leading specialist on British colonialism and its afterlives, you will learn how to talk about Britain’s colonial past with nuance and concision. You will explore how to convey the complexity, diversity and contradiction of a four-hundred-year-long phenomenon without reducing it to a simplistic matter of ‘balance’ between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and without ignoring the ongoing imprint of its racial inequities.

  There will also be discussion around the perils of a ‘balance sheet approach’ to colonial history, why the notion of ‘imperial legacies’ is problematic and how best to talk about those continuities through which the past has shaped the present, especially when it comes to racism.

• Fragile Educational Trajectories: Understanding challenges and opportunities for intervention

  Tuesday 23 June 2026 / 10am-1pm / In person

  Fee: £50 per person

  Delivery: In person on the ÃûæÂÖ±²¥ campus

  Targeted at: Staff working in educational settings across the full age range and staff working in roles requiring knowledge of how to support educational progress and outcomes, including Virtual School staff, social workers and those working within voluntary sector organisations.

  Delivered by:

  Participants will explore the concept of a fragile educational trajectory as a way of thinking more holistically about the association between poorer educational outcomes and social disadvantage. The session will begin by considering which groups of children and young people are most at risk of following this trajectory. You will then explore the challenges they encounter within education systems, including the accumulated effects of such things as low literacy levels and involvement in school exclusion processes. The session will end with a focus on how working with an understanding of these more fragile educational trajectories might aid understanding of opportunities for intervention and support, including over key transition points.

• British Sign Language and Deaf Awareness for Social Work and Related Professions

  Monday 29 June / 9.30am - 5pm / ÃûæÂÖ±²¥

  Fee: £125 per person

  Delivery: In-person only

  Targeted at: Social Workers and people in helping professions

  Delivered by: Parveen Dunlin

  This CPD workshop is tailored for professionals in social work and related fields and offers a unique opportunity to delve into the world and lived experiences of Deaf individuals. Through engaging presentations, group activities, practical tasks, and discussions, you will:

  • learn the basics of BSL and essential communication skills for effective engagement with Deaf people
  • gain insights into how everyday behaviours can be disabling
  • explore Deaf history, culture, and technological advancements.

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.

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