Lowis Charfe

Lowis has an interest in supporting the development of social pedagogy in all areas of social work and social care.  She is the co-author of the first social work book to focus on the use of social pedagogical practice.  She is also passionate about using social pedagogy as a way of supporting organisational and cultural change.

Lowis is a Senior Lecturer. Over the last four years she has helped develop and taught on the BA in Social Pedagogy, Advocacy and Participation degree as well as the Introduction to Social Pedagogy module. She has also taught on various other courses within the department and has focused on topics such as care experienced young people, youth justice, social justice, sociology and legislation and policy. Alongside teaching Lowis is the co-authors of the first English book 'Social pedagogy and Social Work' to focus on the use of social pedagogy in social work and social care practice to support relational based practice. She has also published a number of articles which have been published in the International Journal of Social Pedagogy. The first, 'Creating A Learning Space: Using Experiential Learning and Creativity In The Teaching and Learning of Social Pedagogy' was co-authored with students on the BA in Social Pedagogy, Advocacy and Participation degree. 

Lowis' background is as a social worker working predominantly with children and young people. Her first role was working for the Greater Manchester Probation Service as a Probation Officer for the Manchester City Youth Team. She was then seconded to the newly formed Youth Offending Team within the city, were she worked alongside social workers, police officers and youth workers in supporting young offenders. Lowis then moved to work for a large national charity Action for Children spent a number of years working as a leaving care social worker providing leaving care services for a local authority. She supported young people in their transition from being cared for to independent living and worked alongside families, foster carers, residential staff and local authority social workers. As part of her role, Lowis developed and ran a supported lodgings scheme which offered alternative accommodation to young people leaving care. She also sat on the local homeless forum looking at accommodation and homelessness issues within the authority and attended multi-agency meetings with various focuses from benefits to health. After supervising a number of third year social work students, her interest in social work training led her into teaching and prior to her current position she lectured to the BA social work students at the UCLan campus in Burnley. Her areas of interest are developing social pedagogy practice, values and ethics, relational practice as well as working with children and young people, the criminal justice system and social justice and social work. Lowis enjoys teaching and supporting students with their journey through social work/social pedagogy training and seeing them develop areas of interest that hopefully lead to future careers within the social work arena.

Over the last ten years there have been exciting developments around the growing awareness and use of social pedagogy here in the UK. She is part of the committee organising the International Conference held by the Social Pedagogy Association which is to be hosted by UCLan in February 2021. This conference will bring to together key academics and practitioners from around the world who are involved in developing social pedagogical theory and practice. She has run various training sessions and webinars around social pedagogy and organisational change for several Local Authority teams and third sector organisations. She is also the lead for the UK partner team in the Erasmus funded Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) project, Social Pedagogy In Europe. Headed by ThemPra, the project has developed a short online course looking at the role of social pedagogy across Europe. Lowis is a member of the Social Pedagogy Professional Association and has previously sat on the board of trustees. She has also hosted a number of webinars the lates focusing on the Covid-19 crisis and how social pedagogical practice can support frontline key workers. Lowis is a member of the Social Pedagogy Development network and is passionate about supporting the use of social pedagogy practice in social work and social care.