On 8th June 2010, KSL converted to a fully-fledged social enterprise, a 'Community Interest Company'- see Our Purpose page. We have mostly completed the process of updating all of our communications and documentation, but please bear with us for the remainder!

MHFA England has been supported by DH to establish itself as an independent social enterprise, like we are, and has developed its own new website. After obtaining the licence from MHFA Australia, they have adapted and implemented for England, the Youth version of the highly successful Mental Health First Aid programme. Their National Training Team, and KSL as a first recognised training provider, are now ready for its autumn launch.

Following our recent research and design work for an Appreciative Leadership event with a difference, we are now keen to hear from potential host organisations to commission us to co-produce and manage an innovative new Unconference. Appreciative leadership, self-directed support, child poverty, age equalities and youth crime are just some of the suggested topic headings under which such an event could deliver open knowledge sharing and development in a highly recession-friendly and participatory way.

We have been working with Resli Costabell, our expert Trainer and Coach, to develop something different to assist local authorities struggling to recruit and retain social workers in statutory children and families work, especially since the Baby Peter reporting. We designed this after consulting councils, BASW and CWDC. The title for these support seminars was chosen from the results of a survey on this site: Take care of yourself so you can take care of others: A session to build and maintain social worker resilience. This builds on our work with Felicity Collier and Newham Council to design a tailored induction top-up programme for qualified children and families social workers recruited from overseas. We are now able to deliver more training pilots for local authorities and their recruitment agencies.

It’s finally here… publicly available, official Youth Mental Health First Aid training courses for England; The first course with places available for registration will be held on 20 & 21 October, near Euston/Kings Cross/St Pancras, London.

KSL and our partner R-ART have developed our Partyarts concept further still. We are managing the October Creativity4Health Arts Party to promote and celebrate the creative achievements of Looked After Children in the South East region. We are also organising, for the second year, Lewisham Council’s November awards celebration for LACs/carers, “The Don Awards”.