Brian Cairns

Brian began his career as a teacher in secondary and special schools, before qualifying as a social worker and working in the fields of children & families and mental health., and has also worked in social work education and assessment. Latterly he has built up substantial experience of sitting on Tribunal Panels dealing with mental health, social care and safeguarding appeals and reviews.

Across over 20 years, Brian and his wfe Kate provided a family home for 12 Looked After Children alongside their 3 birth children. They wrote about this experience in "Fostering Attachments" and "Attachment, Trauma, and Resilience, published by Coram BAAF. Brian has continued to contribute to foster care through membership of fostering panels in the independent and not-for-profit sectors.

Brian Roberts

Brian is an independent consultant and trainer on supporting vulnerable and traumatised children and young people.

Brian was a Local Authority foster carer for over 30 years. Along with his wife they have provided long term foster care for large sibling groups. They have been the Special Guardians of three girls and one boy that they previously looked after.

Brian has been Virtual School Head in two English Local Authorities and was one of the Virtual Heads who was on the Department for Children, Schools and Families national pilot. He was also closely involved in national pilots on One to One Tuition, Multi-Therapeutic Treatment Foster Care and the Assisted Boarding School Pathfinder. As a virtual head and foster carer Brian has considerable lived and professional experience of all of the barriers that impact children and young people.

Brian has given oral evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Working Group on Adoption and Fostering on Looked After Children's Educational Achievement (2007), Looked After Children's Achievement (2010) and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders on the impact that FASD has on family life and education (2016 & 2018). He was chosen as one of four foster carers to give oral evidence in Parliament to the Education Select Committee enquiry on the future of fostering (2017) and contributed to the development of Social Worker CPD on securing permanence for Children in Care for the Department for Education (2017). Brian also represented people impacted by FASD at the launch of a national enquiry into the implementation of health advice regarding FASD in Parliament and was a contributor to the FASD UK Alliance discussions with the Deputy Chief Medical Advisor about supporting those affected by FASD and also Adoption UK's Ministerial Round Table discussion focusing on Post Adoption Support, the Education of adopted children and FASD (2018).

Brian works part time as the Director for Education & Wellbeing at the National Organisation for FASD and has been a developer on the national Prevent FASD PSHE programme, the Department of Health and Social Care FASD Awareness and training project and the co-authored the Me & My FASD website for affected young people. He leads on the development and distribution of resources and the Living FASD Magazine.

He has been a key participant in the National Round Tables aimed at collecting best practice in assessing for and supporting those with FASD that culminated in the 'The Time is Now' report in response to the publication of the NICE FASD Quality Standards.

At home Brian and his wife live with three young people with FASD and many of the children that they have fostered have been seriously affected as fetuses by prenatal alcohol consumption and this has led to Brian becoming an expert in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). He has written academically for the FASD Trust, The National Organisation for FASD and the Corum BAAF journal on the Impact that FASD has on education and learning in the UK. He has also appeared on FASD documentaries for the BBC.

He trained and practiced as a teacher for over 25 years His experience covers Humanities Education, Careers Education and Guidance, Young People's Voice and Leadership and he was England's only Advanced Skills Teacher for Enterprise Education.

Kate Cairns

Kate is an author, speaker and trainer with an international reputation for her work around attachment, trauma and resilience, particularly in relation to living and working with people when they are vulnerable. She was a social worker for fifty years, and has been a writer and teacher for thirty years.

With her husband Brian and their three birth children, Kate provided a permanent family for twelve other children between 1975 and 1997. Thereafter, she worked as a trainer/consultant and writer for the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. In 2002 she published Attachment, Trauma and Resilience, which explored how these three key concepts could provide a structure for understanding ourselves and those with whom we work. The book became a bestseller for BAAF and has influenced practice around the world.

Over the past thirty years, Kate has concentrated on translating the insights of current neuroscientific research on brain development and function into accessible knowledge and practice skills for people who work in public services, and for those who support them. She has developed online learning and vocational qualifications, and provided widely-acclaimed training and consultancy to both universal and specialist services across social work, child care, health and education.

Since conducting research for her first book, Surviving Paedophilia (now reissued as Circles of Harm), Kate has been convinced that working with vulnerable people has to be a collaborative exercise. She therefore feels it is a great privilege to be part of a group of associates who embody the shared understanding and vision, and the unity of purpose and action, that are the vital ingredients for supporting recovery and transformation after trauma.