Professor Judy Hutchings was asked to be a keynote speaker at the 4-day BABCP conference in July.
In July, Judy attended the 50th anniversary British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) conference in Cardiff. She was an invited keynote speaker partly because she had been a member for 47 years and is a fellow of BABCP. It was also great that this anniversary conference was in Cardiff since much of the early work had taken place in Wales. In the 1970s Judy along with Prof Fergus Lowe and Dr Peter Hickson edited the first newsletter that subsequently developed into the journal.
Judy’s presentation focused on parenting and its history and how her own and colleagues work had developed the field over the 50 years. A key issue for dissemination of parenting programmes is how to get them to be delivered effectively in frontline, coalface, services. We know what the relevant content is but still have a lot to learn about how to deliver effective services and what is needed by families and in what sort of circumstances. Judy summarised 47 years of her own research addressing some of these questions.