2025 Conference
Come and join us in Cardiff, 9.10.2025, for our much anticipated, next International Conference. We've already booked our celebrated keynotes, and are now inviting applications for workshops and posters.
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This year we also have a FREE Practitioner Event (book here), plus a FREE Supervisor Event (book here), both on the afternoon of the 8.10.2025. Tickets for both events are limited, so book soon! Conference tickets for the next day buy here. Please note that the events on 8.10.2025 and the conference on 9.10.2025 are at different venues!
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​​​Keep an eye on this website, or our socials and the Learning Platform for more information. Any queries, do please email us.
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Oonagh and Ava, AVIGuk Events Team
2025 Keynote Speakers
​​Dr Alain Gregoire is the former Chair, and now Honorary President of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance. Alain is a member of the NICE Guideline Development Group for Antenatal and Postnatal Mental Health, contributing to the development of policy, guidance, and clinical services in the UK and abroad. He is determined to ensure that all women have access to care for their mental health which is at least as good as the care available for their physical health during pregnancy and postnatally.​
Professor Liz Todd was recently awarded an OBE for services to children and young people. She is an AVIGuk supervisor and trainer, a core member of our Research and Publishing Advisory Group, and co-editor of two of the leading VIG books - Video Interaction Guidance: A Relationship-Based Intervention to Promote Attunement, Empathy and Wellbeing and Video Enhanced Reflective Practice: Professional Development through Attuned Interactions. Liz has spent her career endeavouring to make life fairer for children and young people.​
Alain features in this NHS documentary training film that explores how intergenerational trauma affecting parents and babies, and reveals the latest research findings and treatments available - including VIG. The film provides practical tips and signs to spot when dealing with Intergenerational trauma.
LUNCHTIME LIVE
'Lunchtime Live' online events run monthly on a Tuesday lunchtime, with guest speakers, talking about VIG or VERP, with time for questions and discussion at the end. ​These events are open to AVIGuk members and non-members alike.
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Bring your lunch, take a seat, come and join us for a series of fantastic talks and discussion! They can even count towards your VIG CPD! Our next Lunchtime Live session is on Tuesday 15th April, 12.30 - 1.30pm. ​​We're delighted to announce that our next presenters will be from Blackpool, sharing their presentation from a Workshop at our last conference. There they discussed a systems approach to implementing VIG. Melanie Gilday a Parent Infant Therapist with the Parent and Infant Relationship Service (PaIRS) in Blackpool, Melanie Farman, a Development Manager at Blackpool Centre for Early Child Development, along with colleagues from the Blackpool Early Help and Support Services - Laura Halstead (Early Help Link Worker), and Lesley Driscoll (Family Support Worker) - will all speak about their experiences, and their VIG journey.​​​​​​
This will be a really useful lunchtime live to be part of, with passionate VIG practitioners sharing experiences and being able to answer questions at the end. And its great for your CPD! What more could you want from a lunchtime?!
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​ Get your ticket and find out more HERE!​​
MORE 2025 LUNCHTIME LIVE DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:
20.5.25 TBC
10.6.25 VIG Outdoors
Plus a final, live Panel Discussion on 8.7.25
AVIGuk International Conference 2024
Conference Highlights!
From listening to your feedback, we're delighted to hear that you thought the 2024 conference was a great success! It was so lovely to see so many of our VIG community, coming together, to celebrate, share and learn more, about all things VIG. We've already started planning the next conference! In the meantime, please enjoy some of the 2024 Conference highlights, shared below.
CONFERENCE POSTERS
We had SUCH an excellent array of Posters, showing great creativity, innovation, and the most diverse range of projects and uses of VIG and VERP to date. We're going to upload them here, as permissions come in, so do keep checking back, to see the full selection, just two for tasters.....
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Do get in touch with the Poster creators... to find out even more, or to ask them to share their Posters directly with you.
Video Interaction Guidance training: An Empowered Start for Life Workforce
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Michelle Carr and Hilary Kennedy
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Poster shows highlights from the first 12 months of VIG Training for Department Health & Social Care Best Start for Life project. Documents scope of training initiative: number of localities/trainees/supervisors involved in the project. Captures the progress of trainees to date and the impact of practitioners and services.
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VIG in the Community: Implementing VIG in a Psychology-Led Home Visiting Service
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Rebecca Stewart, Selina Light, Ailsa Longbottom
​​Parents Plus
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​A summary of how we have implemented VIG as a whole team approach within Parents Plus. We discuss the strengths and challenges of taking VIG out into the community and the qualitative and quantitative impacts on families and practitioners that have been reported and observed.​
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Rebecca.Stewart@cardiff.gov.uk
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ELEVATE: Enhancing Clinical Skills teaching using VIG with Speech and Language Therapy Students
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Lauren Flannery
​University of East Anglia​​
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​​​Project ELEVATE aims to enhance clinical skills teaching by using VIG with Speech and Language Therapy students. The project has demonstrated that VIG intervention is a powerful teaching tool for developing clinical skills in healthcare students. VIG enhances self-awareness, elicits strength-based reflective practice and develops critical thinking skills. By activating students and maximising the power of the video clips, VIG offers a unique and effective approach to developing attuned interactions, advancing communication skills, enhancing professionalism, and improving clinical competence in healthcare students.
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Creating Wider Participation when supporting families involved with social care through VIG
Jonathon Boulton and Nathaniel Spring
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Our poster describes our work with families involved with social care and our use of VIG in the outdoors to gain an increase in participation, in particular it highlights the effectiveness of our work with male carers who often do not feel included. It also highlights that a lot of our VIG work is with older children.
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Raising the profile of Video Interaction Guidance with families of children who have a Learning Disability
Sophie Levitt, Emma Hignett and Claire Buckley
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These two connected posters describe: recent use in the NHS of VIG with families of children who have a Learning Disability; a feasibility trial of remotely-delivered Video Interaction Guidance for families of children with a Learning Disability referred to specialist mental health services; and how work on the trial has already raised the profile of VIG with families of children who have a Learning Disability.
​sophie.levitt.psychology@gmail.com ​
https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/research/research-projects/ ​​​​​​​​​​​
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https://www.challengingbehaviour.org.uk/what-we-do/projects-and-research/video-interaction-guidance-vig-ld-study-information/https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/research/research-projects/
https://www.challengingbehaviour.org.uk/what-we-do/projects-and-research/video-interaction-guidance-vig-ld-study-information/
Formulation & Video Interaction Guidance
Ann Hockaday and Helen Davis
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Our poster incorporates ideas about how important formulation is to Video Interaction Guidance work. A good formulation includes an understanding of a person within their broader context, their hopes, and their past experiences. This information can then be used alongside the Principles of Attuned Interaction and Guidance to create the most activating clips and to help frame some of the discussions within shared reviews.
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Salford Trainees’ Experiences of Initial VIG Training
Ellie Bourne
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Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust​​
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This poster explored the experiences of practitioners from Salford who have recently completed their Initial VIG training. This training was funded through the Best Start For Life initiative.​
Sharing and Celebrating All That VIG Brings to Us
Helen Gibson and Clare Lowry
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The poster was an opportunity to reflect on all that VIG brings to us as Practitioners and Supervisors. Practitioners and Supervisors were asked to describe their VIG training experience in 3 words and the personal and professional impact VIG has had on them. We collated the 43 responses to create a Wordcloud. The top 10 words that were used to describe personal and professional impact were; growth, confidence, rewarding, learning, uplifting transformation, understanding, helpful, attuned, enhanced. We are still reflecting on our next steps to share this very positive feedback.
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clarelowrypsychology@gmail.com
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More Posters to come....... watch this space!!
2024 Conference: Summary - OPENING ADDRESS AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Opening our conference was the fantastic Clare Law, Director of Blackpool's Centre for Early Child Development, we heard about their life-changing Better Start programme, driving systems change and improving children’s outcomes locally.
From further afield, we had three inspiring keynote speakers:
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Judith Rees, For Baby’s Sake - Nine years of integrating VIG to break the cycle of Domestic Abuse Director of Operations at the ‘For Baby’s Sake Trust'. Judith gave an incredible presentation, celebrating and highlighting, through client and practitoner videos, the vital work her service and teams deliver everyday.
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Dr Neelam Kumar, Dancing into the future or an uphill struggle? Camden’s journey
Joint Acting Principal Educational Psychologist for Camden. Neelam gave a truly motivating and honest speech about Camden's VIG journey, including real-world discussion about some of the challenges of implementing VIG in a Local Authority Service, and how these were overcome!
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Last but not least, we had AVIGuk's very own Joint CEO and founder of VIG in the UK, Hilary Kennedy. It was a beautiful and inspiring speech, culminating in a standing ovation, and barely a dry eye in the house! Hilary delivered a tribute to Colwyn Trevarthen's key importance to VIG. Two weeks after the conference, Colwyn Trevarthen sadly died. His lifetime's work, and legacy, lives on with VIG.
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"Love, then Play, then Work.... Love Comes First"
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WORSHOP TITLES AND PRESENTERS
We had a truly fantastic array of workshops, that went down a storm! Lots of exciting, innovative and creative uses of VIG and VERP, and even some literal fire starting in the VIG Outdoors one! Those who attended the conference, are being sent slides from many of the presenters - and we'll put on the website here, contact details, where we've been given consent.
Morning Workshops 11.10am - 12pm
Video Interaction Guidance in the Outdoors
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Nathaniel Spring and Jonathon Boulton
Oxfordshire
How EP's used VERP to self evaluate consultation skills
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Imogen Wootton, Cróna Neill and Ailsa Darling
Glasgow
A systems approach to implementing VIG across services and teams: learning from Blackpool
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Melanie Gilday, Melanie Farman,
Alison Cross, Laura Halstead and Lesley Driscoll
Blackpool
Inside out and outside in - Integrating ‘Watch Wait Wonder’ and Video Interaction Guidance
Monika Celebi and Bobby Taylor
Online, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire
Afternoon Workshops 2.45pm - 3.35pm
Using VIG within Parenting Assessments - through a Parent's and Professional's lens
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Anna Sklair and Sharon Pinhas
London
Delivering VIG Cross-Culturally: supporting the families of young people living on the street in Tanzania
Zubeida Dasgupta, Menyaichi Mlay and Alex Greene
UK and International
Enhancing Clinical Skills Teaching Using VIG with Speech & Language Therapy Students
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Lauren Flannery
Norfolk
Using VERP in Hearing Dogs for Deaf People
Sandra Strathie and Rebekah Barr Scotland and Cheshire
2024 AVIGuk Conference Team and Photos!
Photo above is of the 2024 Conference Team...
Helen Gibson, Oonagh Davies, Ava Carlon (left to right, top row)
Michele Corley and Louise Harris (left to right, lower row)
See below a selection of the conference photos we took... please send anymore you took, that you'd like us to share
