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Camden Centre for Relational Practice

Camden centre for relational practice logo
 

The Camden Centre for Relational Practice is a research and practice centre launched in November 2024. The Centre is dedicated to creating relational cultures in public services.

Join our free webinars - November 2025 to April 2026

We’re excited to invite you to a new series of free webinars from the Camden Centre for Relational Practice. Each month, we’ll explore a key part of building a relational culture in public services – what it means, why it matters, and how it works in real life.

Everyone’s welcome – use the links below to sign up.

Upcoming webinars for 2026

Building relationships through commissioning

Thursday 30 April, 2pm to 2.55pm. Register for the Building relationships through commissioning webinar.

Past webinars

You can explore the full webinar series by visiting the Camden Centre for Relational Practice playlist.

About us

Public services are built on relationships. Every decision, every interaction, every outcome depends on the quality of connection between people. Yet the pressures on public service organisations - complexity, workforce strain, squeezed funding, growing resident needs - make it harder than ever to work in ways that feel human, compassionate, and grounded in trust.

The Camden Centre for Relational Practice, established by Camden Council in 2024, was created in response to this reality. It is a space built by the public sector, for the public sector shaped by people who understand the demands of front-facing work, the challenges of public sector leadership, and the complexity of systems that hold everything together. This is not an external consultancy looking in. It is a sector‑rooted centre designed by practitioners who know the work because they live it.

The Centre exists to help public sector organisations strengthen the relationships that sit at the heart of good public services. We believe relational practice is not an add‑on or a “nice to have”. It is a core capability for modern public services — improving resident trust, reducing conflict, supporting staff wellbeing, enabling better decisions, and contributing to a stronger society. Small relational shifts can create meaningful change, and our role is to help organisations make those shifts.

At its heart, the Centre is about connection. Connection between people, between organisations, and between the values we hold and the way we work. Connection with each other and with the people we serve. We want to help public services bring out the best in humans.

What we do

We provide support to public services on:

  • relational leadership
  • relational practice drawing on the Camden relational practice framework 
  • relational infrastructure and service design
  • participation and co design 
  • children's services improvement

And we offer:

  • training and workforce development
  • facilitation and codesign
  • peer-to-peer learning programmes and workshops

Who we work with

We work with:

  • public services
  • local authority children’s services in England, offering peer support through the DfE Sector Led Improvement Programme
  • internal Camden services, including delivering Camden’s relational practice framework training for council staff
  • academic institutions, knowledge centres, policy labs and community services who are wanting to try new things in relational public services, acting as a research and development partner and test site

Find out more

Contact us by emailing [email protected].

Read and download our prospectus here