The NAPEP Annual Course 2025 will be hosting an impressive line up of keynotes and speakers. As always our speakers are guaranteed to inspire and educate.
Kate Cropper
Kate began her career as a music teacher and has worked in education policy at the Department for Education for over a decade. She specialises in support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs, support for disadvantaged adult learners, and higher education policy. Kate is Deputy Director for the SEND and AP National System, leading on measures to support mainstream settings in particular in improving inclusion.
Session: DFE Update
Claire Darwin
Claire Darwin is the Principal Educational Psychologist at Suffolk County Council’s Psychology & Therapeutic Services. With extensive experience in educational psychology and working within Local Authority Services, Claire has been instrumental in developing strategies and practice to support inclusion and wellbeing with a focus on promoting person-centred approaches alongside digital innovation.
Claire has led the development and ongoing implementation of the AANT (Analysis of Additional Needs) online platform and digital EP consultation process, emphasising solution-oriented, strengths-based, and person-centred, inclusive approaches. Additionally, Claire has been exploring the integration of AI in public sector work, including educational psychology. By valuing face-to-face and relational practice alongside digital innovation across EP work, Claire aims to enhance the support provided to others. She promotes and leads these innovative practices, delivering training and participating in key strategic developments across the Local Authority and nationally as part of the DECP and NAPEP committees.
Claire's dedication to shaping policy and practice in public sector services for children and young people includes looking at how AI can be integrated into educational psychology while emphasising the balance between leveraging technology and maintaining essential human connections. This approach aims to support colleagues in adapting to technological changes while ensuring safe and relational practice. Claire likes to think of it as combining the best of both worlds – emphasising the value of face-to-face, relational, and community-based approaches while at the same time leaning into and finding out where modern digital innovation can sit alongside safely.
Claire is joined today by Malcolm Taylor, Head of Service, Specialist Provision / Principal Educational Psychologist within Children's Services in Thurrock, to share how another Local Authority is utilising AI to support the delivery of EP work.
Session: AI in Educational Psychology: Introduction, Insights, and Real-Life Applications
Helen Dixon
Helen is a Senior Educational psychologist working in Leeds. She qualified in 2006 at the University of Sheffield as part of the last MSc cohort. Helen has since completed the educational psychology doctorate at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 2015. Her doctoral thesis was Teacher Narratives of Domestic Violence.
Helen has a keen interest in service delivery, particularly in relation to equitable and accessible early intervention. She is also actively involved in supporting children and families experiencing difficulties with school attendance within her service and with wider partners.
Session: Developing Assistant Educational Psychologists
Ed Sugden
Ed is a Senior Educational Psychologist, who was worked in various EPSs in the north of England (and overseas in New Zealand). He qualified from the University of Bristol in 2012, completing a thesis which explored what do young Children Looked After report supports them to learn. Ed is passionate about supporting Children Looked After/Previously Looked After, group problem-solving tools and how we, as EPs, can support EBSA at a variety of levels.
Dr James Wood
I am principal Educational Psychologist for Wiltshire Council. I’m privileged to lead (or more accurately be led by) an amazing, warm, and passionate team of EPs, Assistant EPs, and TEPs. I have held this role for 5 or 6 years, having previously worked as a maingrade EP in Wiltshire. In what feels like the distant past, I trained at Southampton University as part of the first cohort of doctoral trainee EPs.
A predecessor of mine described the PEP role as one of protecting the EPs from the rest of the local authority, whilst simultaneously protecting the rest of the authority from the EPs, and that seems about right! That said, we are lucky in Wiltshire to work alongside an excellent SEND team, and together we are just about managing to weather the storm of EHCNAs and the meltdown of the SEND system.
In my spare time I love to be immersed in music, the arts, the sea, and the sunshine. And, of course, time with my wonderful family.
Session: EBSA/Barriers to Attendance Update
NAPEP 2025
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