Roger Hiley

Roger has a background in managing and leading an outdoor therapeutic team that used the professional approach of social pedagogy. In the sixteen years of leading the team, Roger worked in Youth Services, Children’s Social Care, Early Intervention and Residential & Edge of Care services. The role involved creating a referral service that offered tailored work with individual children, young people, parents and whole families, using outdoor activities and structured therapeutic interventions. 

It was through his parenting work that Roger came to NVR as an evidence-based approach to child-to-caregiver violence. The NVR approach to parental agency gives parents their hope back, allowing parents to think about a future without violence or fear. Replacing behaviourist-transactional-parenting with a model based on connection, parental self-control and presence raising. Roger was most surprised at how NVR helps parents to find more support from their networks, often when they felt they had very few supporters available to them. 

Roger is an adoptive parent and is currently studying for a PhD in Social Work at Oxford Brookes University, examining the English context of outdoor therapeutic work with those who have an involvement with Children’s Social Care services. He is a Leading Practitioner of the Institute for Outdoor Learning and sits on their Round Table group.