Feeling so inspired after the NOTA – National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse international conference in Belfast. Such gratitude to all the organisers for such a wonderful experience & special thanks to Dr Dulcie Faure-Walker conference committee chair for all your work! 

I’m always struck by the sense of care & compassion at NOTA, shown to & around me, especially when we are thinking about very difficult & distressing things. As student rep, I really hope we can grow the student community & have seeds of ideas from the conference we can grow together.

Most special to me is watching change happen – changing language & conversations, changing what we see, how we see it and changing the story. I feel so inspired to witness how the conversation changes including talking about UNCRC (Renae Pepper’s wonderful workshop), Sustainable Development Goals, equity & community (Susan Rayment-McHugh & Nadine McKillop inspiring workshop), young people’s voices & prevention (brilliant workshop Dr Jennifer Allotey), guardianship (Jessica Lockitch’s amazing presentation) and ending the two days with the most powerful keynote on place & context by Carlene Firmin & Nadine McKillop 🔥🔥🔥

We are shifting the focus from ‘them’ to ‘us’ (society, systems, silos) to tell a different story. This matters. Really matters. From stories of young people I was privileged to learn from in my PhD, young people absorb the stories our systems communicate to and about who they ‘are’……boys told me ‘what is written about you is who you are’ and ‘risk is everywhere’. These are the stories we tell them through what we do & this needs to change.

I feel I’ve just witnessed change happening & it’s really, really special ⭐️