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Robyn is a UK-qualified social worker who has a deeply held passion for, and some 30 years of experience working with disenfranchised and/or vulnerable people and children and young people in care. She has a strong interest in social pedagogy and residential childcare both operationally and strategically. Since 1995, she has been in a variety of management positions and has developed and delivered training, conferences, workshops and consultancy on children's social work and social care for the statutory, voluntary and independent sectors. Her work has aimed at improving both the experiences and outcomes for children and young people in or on the edge of care and raising the profile of those affected by, and working within, the social work and social care sectors.

Some commentators have pointed to the United Kingdom (UK) having a tendency towards reducing 'new' concepts or practices so much that they bear little resemblance to the original form. This is why I wish to highlight in this article some of the sometimes subtle, yet profound, differences in a social pedagogical approach to child care in order to better understand the potential of social pedagogy for developing practice. There are five main sections to this article: first, I describe social pedagogy and a conceptualisation of a social pedagogical approach; second, the UK context is examined so as to set the scene for the third, fourth and fifth sections, which examine reflection, relationships and the concept of lifespace through a social pedagogic lens, drawing links to existing good practice in the UK. Although this commentary does not discuss Australian practice, I believe there are some important aspects in the way in which the UK has tried to familiarise itself with social pedagogy that can help Australian readers to better understand some of the subtleties and nuances of the paradigm and inspire their own reflections.

Manualised interventions, in use across the UK for decades and increasingly in use in Denmark, aim to support change through professional practitioners following detailed prescriptions of what they must do to affect a particular change in the target group. Social pedagogy, a strong professional tradition in Denmark and an emerging profession in the UK, takes an approach that responds to the individual's experience of the immediate situation, seeks to nurture relational opportunities and to empower people to fully participate in their lives and society. Harbo's research reveals that this approach can be at odds with manualised interventions for a variety of reasons. A social pedagogically informed programme has been developed in London that uses a clear ethical stance and key theories as its foundation, and upon which structures have been developed, but no manual. This article explores the use of these manualised and non-manualised interventions in Denmark and the UK and the roles of social pedagogues in supporting change through programmatic interventions. Harbo's doctoral research findings on practice surrounding the highly prescriptive manual Aggression Replacement Training in Denmark (Harbo, 2019) is explored alongside Kemp's reflections on the social pedagogically informed Family Learning Intervention Programme in England, examining the tensions and synergies that emerge around each programme when they meet reality and the individual characteristics of day-to-day situations. The perspectives presented emerge from practice research and reflections, and as such are based in an experiential research tradition. Finally, we draw together our learning and openings for further research and policy development.