Symposium Series

We will update this page as events are scheduled. Please check back for future events!

Past Events

Our 1st session in our symposium series featured Pat Branigan, Assistant Director for Scotland's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He gave a presentation on, "Prevention of child sexual abuse in the UK – 'Together for childhood' a 10 year placed based approach." 

This session explored how Scotland's NSPCC is creating a wide range of local partnerships between social care, schools, health, voluntary groups, alongside the police, and local communities themselves. The ultimate goal is to achieve systems change, and the development of preventative frameworks to support agencies and organisations to work together to prevent abuse.

Pat Branigan was the theme lead for Child Sexual Abuse at the NSPCC and is now Assistant Director for Together for Childhood – A place based sexual abuse prevention initiative. He’s an medical anthropologist with a background in public health. At the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine he led research into sensitive sexual health topics including HIV and illicit substance use and was instrumental in shaping the ‘Talk to Frank’ drug awareness programme. More recently in central government he led on co-production of cross-departmental responses to 0-2 year olds (Sure Start and Early Intervention). Pat now leads the NSPCC’s response to child sexual abuse with a focus on prevention and harmful sexual behaviour displayed by children and young people. Pat has recently been awarded a Churchill Fellowship to look at public health approaches to tackling sexual abuse in the UK.