Our Team

Satwinder Sandhu is a leader in the adoption sector, influencing national and international practice and policy. He is a qualified social worker with almost thirty-years of work experience in adoption, fostering and children in public care. Satwinder is passionate about how adoption needs to modernise and focussing this evolution on the needs, and experiences, of adopted people. At Changing Script he is also involved in driving change in organisations through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. Satwinder is a TEDx speaker and a member of numerous sector Boards, including the Rees Centre, University of Oxford. Satwinder took up the role of CEO at CVAA UK in October 2023.

Alice joined the CVAA in December 2021. She started her career working in communications before retraining as a child protection social worker and practicing in London. Prior to the CVAA, she held the position of Investigative Researcher in the policy team of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England. In this role she specialised in issues relating to children’s social care.

Alice holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. She has a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Work and an MSc in Advanced Relationship Based Social Work Practice with Children and Families from the University of Bedfordshire.

Petra joined CVAA in September 2019. Petra oversees the development of the Practice Programme and leads practice networks, services, products and opportunities to enhance learning and development across the adoption and children social care sector. Petra is committed to building CVAA’s reputation as an innovator and ensuring its members remain well supported and at the leading edge of evidence based practice at all levels of their organistion.

Previously she worked at the Youth Justice Legal Centre as a Project and Development Manager delivering specialist youth justice training sessions to solicitors, barristers, judges, and youth offending teams.

Petra holds an MSc in Politics from the University of Surrey.

Hayley joined CVAA in August 2022. Having a degree in Media, Culture and Production, Hayley volunteered for numerous charities and Hampshire Constabulary in media and communication roles before securing a job as PR Officer at Action for Blind People which was at the time, part of the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Since then, Hayley has worked in various roles in marketing, promotions, fundraising and administration.
She also holds a CIM Level 3 and Level 4 certificate in Professional Marketing.

Katherine Samwell-Smith is a passionate advocate for adoption, inspired by her own experience as an international adoptee from Chile to the UK. Since the age of 16, she has openly shared her positive adoption journey at conferences, on radio and television, and in a book, recognizing the lifelong emotional impact it has had.

After over 20 years as a Trustee for Coram IAC, Katherine transitioned to roles as an Adoption Support Worker and Executive Assistant. She utilized her corporate experience and personal understanding as an adoptee and mother to organize events for young adoptees to explore their identities and contribute to crucial decisions about children's futures as an Independent Panel Member on adoption panels.

Jan Way has been a social worker since 1975, working in a range of settings including hospitals, local authorities and adoption agencies. For the last 35 years she has worked in the adoption field, specialising in intercountry adoption and working as a senior manager for IAC- The Centre for Adoption. She now acts as the training advisor for the agency and as Panel Chair She has published several articles in journals on intercountry adoption and the issues and challenges that arise with these placements and runs specialist training sessions on these topics. In 2019 she was awarded an MBE for her work in intercountry adoption.

Jan is also an adopted person and an adoptive mother, having adopted a daughter from South America. In addition to her daughter, who is now 37, she has two grown up birth daughters and two grandchildren.