COURSE

Connecting with Care: Re-thinking Connection

Ideas that shape relationships, conversation, and connection

Facilitators: Dr Rebekah Howes and Professor Nigel Tubbs, Think Learning

Duration: Four 90-minute online sessions, 10-11.30am

Course Dates: 2026 dates tbc

Group size: Up to 15 participants

For: Anyone working for Barnardo's who feels that it's time to care about thinking and is ready to be challenged

Email LDTeam@barnardos.org.uk with subject line CareKnowledge Connecting with Care course to register interest.

Re-thinking Connection is a four-session philosophical course that helps practitioners and managers think more deeply and clearly about what matters in forming effective relationships.

Drawing on some of the most enduring ideas in philosophy the course explores how we think, what we see and fail to see, ways in which we negotiate hierarchy, and how we give others recognition. Through the ideas of Socrates, Plato, and modern reflections on inequality and technology, you’ll develop a clearer sense of what supports and strains caring relationships.

These sessions will leave you with a ‘thinking toolkit’ you can bring into supervision, team discussions, and everyday interactions: a clearer sense of what’s at stake in our relationships, attentiveness to people and situations, and an ability to do think through difficulties in conversation. Just as importantly, the sessions themselves model the kind of thoughtful, questioning, and conversational spaces that people tell us they want to cultivate in their workplaces and teams.

Participants often tell us that this way of learning stays with them long after the sessions end. They also tell us that even when ideas are challenging, the sessions are inspiring, highly enjoyable, and a welcome change from the pressures of daily practice.

‘We’re so busy managing more and more services… Doing the course gave me space to take time back… My team have seen a difference.’

— Participant, 2024

How to book

Email LDTeam@barnardos.org.uk with subject line CareKnowledge Connecting with Care course to register interest.

Meet the facilitators

Dr Rebekah Howes 

Dr Rebekah Howes has 15 years’ experience teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the university sector, and publishing and presenting papers internationally.

In 2010 she co-designed and led the first Liberal Arts degree in the UK, leading the revival of Liberal Arts study in the UK. She brings to Think Learning the strong belief that what and how we learn should matter to us as human beings, and she hopes to continue to develop this sense of humanity in her work with course participants.

Professor Nigel Tubbs

Nigel Tubbs was Professor at the University of Winchester for 15 years after having been a school teacher in West Sussex and Brighton the 1980s and early 1990s. He lead two undergraduate programmes, in Education Studies, and more recently in Liberal Arts, which was the first such programme to be reintroduced into English universities for many decades (having begun life in Ancient Greece with Plato and Aristotle).

As a university researcher he wrote nine books, including Socrates On Trial, which was a New Statesman book of the year 2021. He is currently part of a new venture in higher education called Think Learning.