The annual SES conference was held at Dunston Hall, Norwich on Thursday 21 May 2026.  The guest speakers were brothers, Andy and Matt Smith, who united in 2018 to form Smash Life, a child-centred company focussed on providing support services to young people and professionals.

Andy and Matt are care leavers and are striving to improve the lives of children in similar situations through offering inspirational talks and training.  They are able to provide a unique insight into what it can feel like to live within the care system, drawing on their own lived experiences and their combined professional experience of working with young people and families.

All SES staff were included in the conference as everyone is keen to learn as much as possible about how to improve the lives of the children we look after.  This can be a logistical challenge as part of the team need to stay with the children, therefore Matt and Andy had to speak once in the morning and repeat everything in the afternoon for a second sitting!

One of the areas SES has been focussing on this year is capturing the Voice of the Child.  Some of our forms and documents have already been updated to assist with this, but Andy and Matt gave more of an insight into what it can feel like to read your own records when leaving care.  It was a very interesting and thought-provoking day, prompting a lot of reflection as well as ideas to take back to SES to improve our current way of recording information about young people.

We are hoping it won’t be the last we see of Smash Life!