Friendships are a crucial part of human relationships and care experienced children and young people often identify their friendships as their most important source of emotional support. Despite this, friendships are frequently overlooked, with professionals prioritising family relations.

Leaving school and going to college or university offers a great opportunity for care-experienced young people to make friends for life, but they often need a bit of help with this or even just an opportunity to meet likeminded people.

Leaving school and going to college or university offers a great opportunity for care-experienced young people to make friends for life, but they often need a bit of help with this or even just an opportunity to meet likeminded people.

In this webinar Lowis Charfe will shared the findings from a small research project she undertook with her colleague Gabriel Eichsteller (ThemPra) where they found out what work is being done to support the friendships of care experienced children and young people.

Before you watch this webinar, here are 2 questions to get you thinking: :

What makes a friendship great?
What's the most trouble, good or bad) you and your friend's caused? Don't worry you won't be asked to share this.

Speakers

Lowis Charfe

Formerly a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, Lowis is now an Independent Trainer working with colleagues at ThemPra Social Pedagogy CIC. Her academic and practice-based work has focused on developing courses in social pedagogy and leadership, including leading the UK team for the Erasmus-funded MOOC Social Pedagogy Across Europe, which has engaged over 6,100 students worldwide.

Lowis is an active member of the Social Pedagogy Professional Association, the Global Alliance for Social Pedagogy, and the Human Learning Systems network. Her publications include Social Pedagogy and Social Work (SAGE, 2019), articles for the International Journal of Social Pedagogy, and contributions to the HLS e-book. In 2023, she co-authored a chapter for the Oxford University Press Handbook of Power, Politics and Social Work exploring the Danish 3P’s framework in practice.