Children & Families Across Borders

Carolyn Housman is the CEO of Children and Families Across Borders ( CFAB) the UK’s only NGO with a dedicated international social work team, Children and Families Across Borders http://www.cfab.org.uk, which alerts social services and professionally assesses long-term care options for children domestically and in 130 countries to ensure every child has a safe home. She is Vice-Chair of the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance, whose mission is to promote and strengthen the social service workforce to provide services when and where they are most needed, alleviate poverty, challenge and reduce discrimination, promote social justice and human rights, and prevent and respond to violence and family separation.

She is also a Professional Advisory Committee member of the International Social Service network and Chair of the Cross-border Child Safeguarding Working Group, comprised of social work leaders within Home Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Department for Education, Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) and the Children’s Commissioner’s Office. She has co-authored ground-breaking research into the practice, challenges and solutions in cross-border child protection and child placements. She regularly lectures in university degree courses on international challenges in social work.

During her career, she has successfully advocated for and monitored the implementation of system change in different countries – from advising governments in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia on setting up National Referral Mechanisms for trafficked persons through to leading Inter-American Development Bank seminars on developing local procurement systems for sustainable development in Guatemala. She has broad international experience, having worked for Amnesty International (USA), the Washington Office on Latin America (USA), the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (Austria), and, currently, Children and Families Across Borders (UK).

Eve Joy Wilson is a UK-registered social worker. She has an undergraduate degree in Linguistics from SOAS and a postgraduate degree in Social Work from Goldsmiths College. She trained with CFAB in 2018, and practiced in a local authority children’s safeguarding team before returning to CFAB in 2021. She is interested in social work activism and collaborative campaigning, and co-organises SWots, a monthly reading and discussion group for social care workers. You can join the Swots mailing list by emailing swotsgroup@gmail.com and reach Eve Joy on Twitter @evejoywilson. You can also sign up to the first SWots session of the year on parent advocacy and empowerment in child protection here: SWots 1: Parent voices for change in the US & UK with Tim, Rich & Clarissa Tickets, Wed 10 Aug 2022 at 17:00 | Eventbrite