CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
THE CHILD WITHIN: SEPARATION AND LOSS 2025
Welcome To BAATN Conference 2025.....3
Saturday Programme.....4
Sunday Programme.....5
Saturday Chair and Keynote Presentations.....6-8
Saturday Workshops.....9-12
Saturday Evening Programme.....13
Sunday Chair and Keynote Presentations.....14-16
Sunday Workshops.....17-19
Bookshop.....20 Venue Details.....21-23 (parking requires registration)
Dates for the diary: Online Conference: 11 Oct 2025 th Next in-person Conference 18 and 19 April 2026 th th
WELCOME TO CONFERENCE
“There is the child in all of us that refuses to grow up, a child that is in awe of what can be, the polar opposite of the cynic who despairs over what is. Stories of magic, fantastic monsters, impossible courage and spectacular heroism appeal to this child, instilling it with hope and faith in humanity and in the cosmic order.”
Shatrujeet Nath - journalist and fiction writer
This is our 19th Annual conference. These conferences are a rare opportunity to come together, share our knowledge, tell our stories, feel connected and gain mutual support and inspiration.
An inner child well-loved is an adult well-lived.
-Eugene Ellis , 2025
SATURDAY 26 APRIL 2025 TH
PROGRAMME
09:30 – Tea / Coffee / Registration
10:30 – Introduction to the conference and opening remarks – Eugene Ellis, founder and director of BAATN
11:00 – Keynote 1: (30 min followed by 15 min reflections)
11:45 – Break (30 mins)
12:15 – Keynote 2: (30 min followed by 15 min reflections)
13:00 – Lunch (1hr 30 min)
14:30 – Workshops (1hr 30 min)
16:00 – Break (30 min)
16:30 – Plenary and Ending Ritual (30 mins)
17:00 – End
SUNDAY 27 APRIL 2025 TH PROGRAMME
09:00 – Registrations
09:30 – Conference Start – Introduction to the conference and opening remarks – Carmen Joanne Ablack
09:45 – Keynote 3: (30 min followed by 15 min reflections)
10:30 Break (30 mins)
11:00 – Keynote 4: (30 min followed by 15 min reflections)
11:45 – Celebrations and Notice board
12:00 – Lunch (1hr 15 min)
13:15 – Workshops (1hr 30 min)
14:45 – Break (15 mins)
15:00 – Plenary and Ending Ritual (30 mins)
15:30 – End
EUGENE ELLIS
Eugene Ellis is a writer, psychotherapist and public speaker on the impact of racism, difference and intersectionality. He is also the founder and director of The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN)
His book, ‘Transforming Race Conversation: A Healing Guide F or Us All‘, explores how the distress of intergenerational trauma, postchattel slavery and colonialism lives on not just in our minds but also in our bodies. As well as helping us to develop an understanding of the forces that made the race construct necessary through exploring the history and development of race, the book focuses specifically on the non-verbal communication of race, both as a means of social control and as an essential part of navigating oppressive patterns.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Transforming Race Conversation: A Healing Guide F or Us All‘. Published in July 2024 through Norton Professional Books
Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Developments: Finding Our Voice across the Black/White Divide Edited by Baffour Abadio and Roland Littlewood. Jan 2019
BLACK CHILD WHITE NANNY
11:00AM SATURDAY 26TH APRIL 2025
ABI OSHO AND LOLA JAYE
This keynote delves into the lived experiences of Abi Osho and Lola Jaye, both of whom were raised in cross-cultural, privately fostered households.
This is more than a conversation; it is an invitation to explore the impact of cross-cultural fostering through a lens of lived experience, emotional truth, and the power of storytelling.
Abi Osho is a renowned Visibility Coach, Author, and Speaker, dedicated to empowering women to embrace their personal stories, elevate their visibility, and step into the highest version of themselves. Lola Jaye is a critically acclaimed author & psychotherapist who has penned seven novels and a self-help book. Her latest novel, ‘The Manual for Good Wives’ (Macmillan) was released February 2025.
RE-STORYING AND RESTORING THE INNER CHILD
12:15PM SATURDAY 26TH APRIL 2025
SABINA F. KHAN
I will share a few stories from my childhood and early life – a girl born and raised solely on the continent of Africa in a Muslim family with Indian ancestry under Apartheid in South Africa – in order to present an autoethnographic snapshot of how a deeply internalised inferiority can come to be held in a body that is gendered, racialised and sexualised in particular ways.
My hope is that the multiple aspects of my life I share in these stories, in some way, provide a gentle invitation or ‘intimate provocation’ (Holman-Jones, 2005) within you, the listener as audience, to reflect on your own stories and to ask more sociocultural and political questions about the relational contexts from which your narratives emerge.
Sabina Khan is a full clinical psychotherapist in private practice in London and beyond. Accredited and registered with UKCP, BACP and BPS, her approach to her clinical work is integrative and relational, drawing on a range of psychological, psychotherapeutic and psychosocial theories and research to inform her decolonial and intersectional feminist therapeutic frame.
CONFERENCE
CENTRE- KENTS HILL PARK CONFERENCE CENTRE
All of the weekend workshops and presentations will take place in the Kents Hill Park Conference Centre and will be clearly marked.
Please give yourself enough time to move throughout the building to your chosen sessions.
WORKSHOP 1 REFLECTION ON KEYNOTE TALK: BLACK
CHILD WHITE NANNY
An opportunity to reflect on the keynote talk: Black Child White Nanny - The Experience and Complexities of CrossCultural & Private Fostering
FACILITATORS
Abi Osho – Visibility Coach, Author, Speaker and BAFTA Award-Winning Retreat Curator
Lola Jaye – Critically acclaimed author and psychotherapist FIND OUT MORE ABOUTTHE WORKSHOPS ONTHE BAATN WEBSITE
WORKSHOP 2
REFLECTIONS ON KEYNOTE TALK: RE-
STORYING AND RESTORING THE INNER CHILD
This workshop will provide an opportunity to reflect on the keynote talk: Re-Storying and Restoring the Inner Child
FACILITATOR
Sabina F. Khan - Clinical psychotherapist, conference speaker
WORKSHOP 3
LET’S PLAY TOGETHER
Come along to this highly interactive workshop and participate in a range of fun, group games and playful activities. This workshop will involve lots of movement, joy, self-reflection, and participants will be encouraged to be their full authentic selves. Be prepared to play with others, be a little silly and bring your playful self with you, because life is way too short to be anything but happy.
FACILITATOR
DENNIS L CARNEY - Therapist, Facilitator and Activist
GIVING VOICE TO OUR INNER CHILD
Offering a space to speak with your inner child. The intention of this workshop is acceptance and understanding of our inner child – offering compassion to our wounded parts, enabling integration and leading to feeling more settled in our adult lives.
FACILITATORS
MICKEY PEAKE - Counsellor, group facilitator and BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team member
WORKSHOP
ON GROWING UP A MULTI-HERITAGE CHILD
A reflective and creative exploration for those who identify as having a multi-heritage background FACILITATOR
Mary-Claire Wilson – Integrative Psychotherapist and supervisor
WORKSHOP 6
HEART HUB GENDER AND SEXUAL DIVERSITY
REFLECTION SPACE
A holistic space for those who personally identify with gender, sexuality and relationship diversity to reflect on the intersection of race, heritage and culture
FACILITATORS
Kirath Ghataora (they/them) - Integrative psychotherapist, supervisor, consultant and group facilitator
Wayne M. Mertins-Brown - Integrative psychotherapist, counselling consultant, group facilitator
WORKSHOP 7
OPEN DISCUSSION SPACE
An opportunity to reflect on the themes of the conference in a supportive, open space.
FACILITATORS
Naila Dunleavy - Integrative therapist, writer and artist
Ian Thompson - Group facilitator, qualified trainer and member of the BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team
SATURDAY 26TH APRIL 2025
EVENING PROGRAMME
19:00 Welcome Drinks
19:30 Dinner is served
21:00 DJ Dil and Dancing
Midnight - End of the evening
DJ DIL
DJ Dil specialises in various genres, especially R&B, Afrobeats, disco 80s, house, Bollywood, Bhangra, and arab Bellydance music.
Dil works with various communities and groups and particularly loves working with elders, often bringing them to the dancefloor. Dil is known as the “dancing DJ”.
CARMEN JOANNE ABLACK
Carmen Joanne Ablack (MSc UKCP and EABP accredited) is an Integrative Body Psychotherapist, Gestalt Psychotherapist, Group Psychotherapist and Supervisor. She holds the roles of Director of Psychotherapy and Course Leader at the Gestalt Centre in London.
She is also a member of the Black, African & Asian Therapy Network (BAATN) Leadership Group, where she also sits on the BAATN External Relations Group.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Ablack, C. J (2023). Embodied Experiencing Relational Learning. In I. Mckenzie-Mavinga, K. Black, E. Ellis, & K. Carberry (Eds.), Therapy in Colour: Intersectional, Anti-Racist and Intercultural Approaches by Therapists of Colour. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
“In her own voice’ in the BGJ, (2021 Volume 30 No.1).
LET US PLAY: PLAYING AND GRIEVING IN ADULT PSYCHOTHERAPY
9:45AM SUNDAY 27TH APRIL 2025
VEENA GANAPATHY
I will share how I work with adults to connect with their child selves in order to grieve and heal from unresolved, often previously unnamed losses. I will suggest that an approach of playfulness, childlike curiosity and creativity can be the gateway through which the self can be found and loss can be felt and borne.
Safety and trust need to be established – perhaps for the first time – so individuals can connect with their capacity to play and ultimately, make sense of their world. It may be universal that we don’t play or explore when we feel threatened and fearful. For those of us who inhabit brown, Black and shared-heritage bodies in particular, this can be a painful and limiting reality. I share how I try to support individuals with racialised woundings and/ or oppression, including in relation to their sexual, gender or neurodiverse identities.
Veena is a psychodynamic psychotherapist working in private practice. She is a former mental health social worker and bereavement counsellorwith an academic background in psychology.
THE MOTHER WOUND AND YOUR MONEY
11:00AM SUNDAY 27TH APRIL 2025
JUNE ALLEN
Shame from childhood trauma combined with systemic oppression can deeply impact our sense of worthiness, visibility and the right to thrive as wellness practitioners. In this session, June will explore the connection between our attachment wounds and how they manifest in our relationship to money and receiving.
She will also share her money shame journey, revealing how underearning and overgiving was rooted in unhealed mother wounds. With self-parenting and financial therapy tools, we can heal our relationship with money and build abundant businesses rooted in self-trust, empowerment and sustainability.
June Allen is a seasoned racial trauma therapist with over a decade of experience supporting the African diaspora in reclaiming their healing and power. She has developed a transformative framework that integrates decolonizing therapy, somatic practices, and 12-step recovery tools, creating a sacred space for racial healing, self-empowerment, and community care.
June is available for private therapy, executive business coaching, and racial wellness workshop Learn more at www juneallen net
WORKSHOP 1 REFLECTIONS ON KEYNOTE TALK: LET US PLAY: PLAYING AND GRIEVING IN ADULT PSYCHOTHERAPY
An opportunity to reflect on the keynote talk: Let us PlayPlaying and Grieving in Adult Psychotherapy
FACILITATOR
Veena Ganapathy – keynote speaker and psychodynamic psychotherapist
An opportunity to reflect on the keynote talk: The Mother Wound and Your Money
FACILITATOR
WORKSHOP 3
LET’S PLAY TOGETHER
Come along to this highly interactive workshop and participate in a range of fun, group games and playful activities. This workshop will involve lots of movement, joy, self-reflection, and participants will be encouraged to be their full authentic selves. Be prepared to play with others, be a little silly and bring your playful self with you, because life is way too short to be anything but happy.
FACILITATORS
DENNIS L CARNEY - Therapist, Facilitator and Activist
WORKSHOP 4
GIVING A VOICE TO OUR INNER CHILD
Offering a space to speak with your inner child.The intention of this workshop is acceptance and understanding of our inner child – offering compassion to ourwounded parts, enabling integration and leading to feeling more settled in our adult lives.
FACILITATOR
MICKEY PEAKE - Counsellor, group facilitator and BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team member
WORKSHOP 5
EAST AND SOUTH EAST ASIAN REFLECTION SPACE
A space of reflection for individuals of East and Southeast Asian heritage or upbringing
FACILITATORS
Sandra Chittick - integrative counsellor, Chinese Therapists Network founder
Christine Shaw - trilingual person-centered counsellor
WORKSHOP 6
OPEN DISCUSSION SPACE
An opportunity to reflect on the themes of the conference in a supportive, open space.
FACILITATORS
Moriam Grillo - art psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, therapeutic coach and anti-racism trainer
Robert Sookhan - person-centred psychotherapist, jointhead of a university counselling service
THE BOOKSHOP
New Beacon Books was established in 1966 by John La Rose and his partner, Sarah White. It was the UK's first black publisher, specialist bookshop, and international book distributor.
Bookstall will be present on Saturday only
New Beacon Books has a diverse range of poetry, literature, non-fiction, history, and children's books from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, African America, Europe, South America, and Black Britain.
76 Stroud Green Road, London, England, N4 3EN https://www newbeaconbooks com/
VENUE MAP
KENTS HILL PARK TRAINING AND CONFERENCE CENTRE Accessibility
The venue is fully accessible. Disabled parking is on site. There is ample parking for guests.
The car park is free. However, you must register your car at the tablet at reception. You must also re-register if you go off-site.
LEISURE CENTRE
WEEKEND OPENING TIMES
7:30 AM.- 18:00 PM (POOL CLOSES AT 5:40 PM). ALL DELEGATES OF THE CONFERENCE HAVE USE OF THE ON-SITE NUFFIELD
HEALTH LEISURE FACILITIES –
16M SWIMMING POOL, SAUNA, STEAM ROOM, SPA, SQUASH COURT AND FULLY EQUIPPED GYM.
LEISURE CENTRE RECEPTION: 01908 358383
SKYLINE 01908 222111
THERE IS A TAXI BUTTON LOCATED IN RECEPTION.
