A huge thank you to everyone who came to our second open network meeting on the 7th October at Nottingham University. The day was filled with fascinating presentations and exciting discussions. A special thank you to Dr Julie McGarry for hosting us, and thank you to our other amazing speakers:

• Concetta Perôt, Independent Researcher, KCL Associate and Co-founder, Survivors’ Voices
• Prof Vanessa Munro, University of Warwick
• Dr Julie McGarry, University of Nottingham
• Dr Parveen Ali, University of Sheffield
• Vickie Crompton, Standing Together Against Domestic Violence

We were pleased to start off the day by launching the VAMHN "Survivors' priority themes and questions for research consultation report", which you can download here. Concetta Perôt who co-authored the report has also written a blog post about the report which you can read here.  

Vanessa Garrity of WeMHNurses was live tweeting the event and has also produced several podcast interviews with our speakers which you can listen to below. You can also have a look at some selected slides that were shown on the day. 

​Set in the beautiful campus at the University of Stirling, I recently presented at the Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing conference, hosted by the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection. The theme of this year’s interdisciplinary conference was ‘Communities, families, resilience and resistance’.
 
Based on the key findings from my PhD, I discussed the importance of prioritising the agency and voices of children who have experienced domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in intervention research and practice. This is timely as we seek to strengthen the DVA intervention evidence base and as a Core Outcome Set for children is currently developed in the UK. Presenting my research led to receiving an invitation to co-author a chapter in a book about children and DVA (watch this space!).
 
It was fascinating to learn how others have used a variety of creative research methods with young people, such photo elicitation in a study that invited siblings of children with eating disorders to share their stories. Also, a group of young people spoke about their own experience of co-producing a recruitment video for a study exploring children’s journeys through CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services).
 
Across the inspiring keynotes, papers and posters, one key message was unanimous- children have capacity for resilience and agency in adversity and their voices should be heard. This presents us with an important challenge. Do we view children as resilient and agentic in adversity, and to what extent is this reflected in practice and in the research we do with children?
 
As a postdoctoral researcher, I am very grateful to the VAMHN for supporting me in this opportunity to share my doctoral work and to learn invaluable lessons from others in different disciplines. 

The VAMHN is delighted to announce that we are recruiting for a Lived Experience Involvement Officer. The position will be 30% FTE with a salary of £28,717 to £31,831 per annum (pro-rata) inclusive of London Allowance (pro-rata). The post holder will contribute to the development and delivery of the network’s survivor and service user involvement strategy. The deadline for applications is 30th October 2019. For full details and to apply click here.