The Story So Far
Crafted for over 15 years, Sandstories is driven by a passion to make lasting change.
Sue Woolmore, founder of Sandstories, has worked in child protection for nearly 40 years. Sue initially qualified as a nurse, working in the Leeds teaching hospitals, until she trained as a social worker and worked in local authority child protection services for 13 years.
In 1999 Sue then joined the NSPCC, working with the Society for 12 years. She also served as the independent chair of two Local Safeguarding Children Boards in the north of England. In the course of her career, Sue has also undertaken parliamentary and public policy functions.
Sue has led and authored a number of serious case reviews.
In recent years, Sue’s work has been further influenced by the insights she gained through achieving a Diploma in Trauma Informed Practice.
All of Sue’s experience has been woven together as she travelled across all the UK jurisdictions, promoting child centred practice through the delivery of her unique style of training, known as Sandstories.
The first chapter of Sandstories began in 2009
In 2009, Sue was invited to a national conference about child deaths, to deliver a workshop about “disguised compliance”.
Whilst Sue had a great deal of experience to offer this workshop, including conventional presentation skills, she surprised herself by deciding that this was the moment to experiment with a new style of presentation.
The new style was entirely visual, without PowerPoint.
It was based on storytelling and illustrated with the use of 15kg of sand and various props.
In saying this, Sue should confess that she took a PowerPoint presentation with her on a memory stick, just in case her experiment completely bombed!
But it didn’t.
On the contrary.
This single workshop proved to be a springboard for invitations across the UK to deliver this unique style of training in child centred practice, using storytelling and reflection, to thousands of multi-agency practitioners and managers.
Interestingly, it was early commissioners of this unique training style which gave it the name Sandstories, as they often said, “Can we book you to do that training where you tell stories with sand?”.
15 years later, having travelled hundreds of thousands of miles around the UK to share Sandstories training, it became increasingly clear that Sandstories needed to enter a new chapter, which is less reliant on Sue’s availability and would make it more accessible to a larger number of people.
And so, with a 50 minute film presented by Sue as its centrepiece, Sandstories Workshops were conceived and developed.
The unique 50-minute training film, presented by Sue Woolmore, is the key element of the Sandstories workshop, as it captures the essential messages of child centred practice in a visual and powerful way.
The film was produced by the expertise of an excellent film production company, called Isaac Who, which really took the Sandstories message to heart.