Call for papers
About this conference series
The 10th National Child Protection and Welfare Social Work Conference will take place on campus (F2F) on the 24th of October 2025. This conference is a not-for-profit partnership between frontline child protection and welfare staff in TUSLA, the Irish Association of Social Workers, and University College Cork (@UCCsocialwork, School of Applied Social Studies). Click here to find out more about the conference.
About this conference series (SWCONF)
The 10th National Child Protection and Welfare Social Work Conference will take place at UCC on the 24th of October 2025. This conference is a not-for-profit partnership between frontline child protection and welfare staff in TUSLA, the Irish Association of Social Workers, and University College Cork (@UCCsocialwork, School of Applied Social Studies). Click here to find out more about the conference.
Child protection and welfare social work in Ireland is a constantly evolving field of professional practice with rapid changes in policy, practice, legislation and statutory systems. Child protection and welfare social workers collaborate with professionals, services and representative groups to identify and promote the welfare of children and families, and to enhance social justice. Ireland is incrementally becoming a better place for children to live, but there is more to do to ensure that all children have a positive, safe and healthy childhood.
The theme of the 10th national conference, SWCONF25 is: Child Protection and Children’s Rights: The Future of Social Work. Click here for the call for papers in a download PDF version: SWCONF25 call for papers Closing date: 11th April 2025.
SWCONF25 is supported by: Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, IASW, Tusla, and @UCCsocialwork.
Invitation to submit
The conference committee invites experts by experience, practitioners, academics, researchers, managers, representative groups, policy-makers, community groups, and social commentators to submit on the theme for this conference. The conference is open to all disciplines and services. We especially welcome papers from practitioners that reflect upon challenges and innovations arising in everyday practice in child protection and welfare. Abstracts must explicitly address the conference theme. At this point, you just need to submit and abstract - you don't need slides at the abstract stage and there is no written conference paper.
Following requests from delegates at our last few conferences, parallel sessions will run twice. Successful speakers will present their paper twice: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Oral Papers: The conference committee is inviting abstracts which can be presented in the form of an oral paper. The duration of the oral paper presentation is 15 minutes plus 5 mins for questions and can relate to practice, experiences of using the child protection system, research, education, system development, technologies, advocacy, and policy issues relevant to the conference theme. Time will be allowed for audience discussion in the session. Papers will be face-to-face at UCC – online presentations cannot be facilitated. Successful authors will be required to register to attend the conference in full and present their paper twice as parallel sessions will occur both morning and afternoon.
The closing date has been extended to the 25th April 2025.