LEGAL LEARNING SESSION: Cross-border social work post-Brexit

Maria Wright is a senior legal advisor to CFAB. She is a solicitor with a particular expertise in children’s law with an international element. She is also a doctoral researcher with the University of Bristol, currently completing research into care proceedings with an international element.

Maria has also published widely on children’s law with an international element. She is the co-author of a leading practitioner’s text, ‘International Issues in Family Law The 1996 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Brussels IIa’ (2015 Jordans). Maria has also published extensively on the use of Special Guardianship in care proceedings with an international element, transfers of jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of orders and the protection of children where jurisdiction is in issue. She regularly delivers training and lectures on care proceedings with an international dimension to a wide variety of professionals.

Nadine Wesslowski is an inter-country social worker at CFAB originally having qualified as a social worker in Germany.

She manages complex cases concerning the assessment of kinship carers and the possible overseas placement of children with their family members overseas as well as safeguarding children when they move between countries. She provides expert advice to queries to the CFAB Advice line requiring international social work intervention. Nadine has been project manager for the London Children’s Project with the aim of raising awareness of international elements within social work and which identified the need for further training within the profession to better understand the complexities involved. She currently delivers regular “International Child Protections and Kinship Care Training.

Nadine has a background of working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children as well as working in the field of child protection, children in care and community work.