Cedar Create celebrates CWP workforce at national conference

Published on 20 September 2023

On Friday 15th September, Cedar Create hosted the inaugural National Conference for Children and Young People's Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs) in collaboration with NHS England. Held at St Mary's Church in London, the event welcomed nearly 300 attendees from across the country.

From CWPs to commissioners and trainees to young advisors, our diverse range of attendees enjoyed coming together to celebrate their achievements, share learning across regions and hear about plans for the future. You can watch the highlights in this short video.

“All of the speakers were informative and engaging and it was a great learning experience” – Conference attendee

“The presentations were interesting and motivational, I came away with an enhanced sense of purpose in my role” – Conference attendee

Vicki Curry, Programme Director at the Anna Freud Centre and University College London, opened the day and welcomed the incredible co-hosts; young advisors from the Young Person’s Advisory Service Liverpool and Young Advisors Midlands introduced speakers throughout the day and gave the audience an insight into their experience of working with CWPs and the mental health service more widely. They brought an incredible sense of energy to the day and were named as the highlight of the day for many of our attendees’ .

“It was such a great experience being involved with the conference! Thank you very much again for the opportunity.” – Young Advisor from YPAS

Elaine Bowden, Strategic Programme Lead – National Mental Health Team at NHS England (Workforce Training and Education), led the first keynote talk providing context on the CWP role and its commissioning to date. Following on from Elaine, the second keynote further explained the background to the CWP role and looked into the transformation of children and young people’s mental health care over the past few years.

We then heard from 25 speakers from across the country, each providing a unique update from their region’s perspective. A couple of examples include qualified CWPs sharing their training story; an exploration of the challenge around recruiting men into the CWP role and potential link to a lower number of boys accessing the service than girls; and how data can be used to improve service delivery.

The third keynote showcased outcome data from across England, celebrating the real-world realisation of the CWP role, highlighting the growing impact of the CWP role since inception and presenting compelling data demonstrating the effectiveness of CWPs in improving the wellbeing of children and young people.

Finally, Peter Fonagy, Senior National Clinical Advisor of the NHS England Children and Young People’s Mental Health programme, closed the day with a powerful talk looking ahead, noting CWPs as the key resource for the future of preventive child psychiatry.

“Peter’s words of inspiration for the future! Walking away feeling so inspired to keep pushing on in the difficult climate.” – Attendee when asked for their highlight of the event

You can see more information on the event, the full agenda and examples of the amazing work happening around the country (including case studies, testimonials and data) in the delegate pack here.

You can also see the presentations from the day below. Recordings of each talk will be uploaded to this page in due course.

If you have any questions, please get in touch on createprojects-cedar@exeter.ac.uk.

Presentations