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The Camden Centre for Relational Practice is a research and practice hub launched in November 2024. Run by Camden Council, the Centre is dedicated to creating relational cultures in public services.

Relational public services have to mean more than just ‘having good relationships’. The Camden Centre for Relational Practice is about increasing institutional capacity to do things with people, not to them. To do this, we support public services to put relationships at the heart of staff practice and at the heart of the environments staff work in. 

This goes beyond training people to be relational in their working lives. It also means designing the infrastructure of public services to support relationships in all possible ways, from the language used in a letter to the way a meeting is run. This is the heart of the Centre's philosophy - its both/and. 

 

Why does this matter? 

The innovation and collaboration we need to tackle 21st century problems such as poverty, housing precarity, loneliness and polarisation require the collective capabilities of everyone in a place - services, businesses and communities. The ability to build relationships, between different people with often very different world views, will be essential. To harness those collective capabilities, public service cultures must change so that relationships are designed into the fabric of our organisations. 

The Camden Centre for Relational Practice believes this is possible - if we are intentional in both equipping public servants with relational capabilities and rewiring the insides of our public institutions so they enable relationships, not fight against them. 

Nana Bonsu 

Nana is the Director of Relational Practice at the London Borough of Camden and leads the Camden Centre for Relational Practice. Nana is a qualified social worker, family and systemic psychotherapist, and systemic supervisor. She has worked in children’s services for over 20 years, both in children’s statutory services and CAMHs (Child Adolescent and Mental Health Services). She has an impressive track record of developing clinical services in several local authorities, transforming practice culture and developing services that challenge social injustice, are collaborative and draw upon unorthodoxy. Nana was one of four Directors at the Institute of Family Therapy, and is an experienced lecturer, teaching at the Tavistock and Portman, Institute of Family Therapy, and the Association of Family Therapy.

Becca Dove 

Becca is Head of the Camden Centre for Relational Practice. She has worked in services for children and families for over 20 years, including eight as Camden’s Head of Family Early Help, and has led change and transformation programmes in a range of local authorities including county councils and unitaries. Becca was previously Assistant Director of Commissioning for Bedfordshire County Council and a National Sector Specialist for Families, Parents and Carers for the Centre for Excellence in Outcomes. Becca is a doctoral student at the University of Northampton, researching the role of community and social support for children with a social worker. She studied Systemic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and holds a Masters in Family Support from the University of Galway. Becca is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and has had work on relational practices published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and Transforming Society. 

 

Frances Winter – Principal Policy and Projects Officer

If you'd like a chat with any of the team, please do contact us [email protected]