I have worked with children and youth in Brazil for 30 years and have been involved with a local university and children’s judges promoting debates about many aspects of working with children and families who have suffered violence and trauma. Looking at how Brazil has no policy or well known practice around the integration of care leavers into mainstream society once they reach adulthood, we decided to hold a series of debates sharing how different countries work to encourage care leaver autonomy and social integration. It was within this context that a long term friend and colleague suggested that I contact Jason to talk about the English experience and policies around care leavers.

From my first contact, Jason showed himself to be very generous with his time and knowledge and interested in knowing how systems work elsewhere. Jason was the main speaker for our 2 hour webinar: “Promoting autonomy in looked after teenagers: the English experience” and gave a very complete and knowledgeable overview both from an historical point of view and also looking at current practice and policy. He also brought his own personal experiences including working with care leavers which greatly enriched the event and also helped inform the debate after his presentation. I know that speaking in webinars can be a very two dimensional experience but over 500 people have already watched it and after watching the Portuguese, Italian and English experiences in this area, a large charity working with institutional and foster care has been inspired to open two houses for semi-autonomous living for young care leavers.

Jonathan Hannay, MBE
International Consultant – ACER

Dr Jason Collins provides thereaputic input to our Residential Children’s home by delivering monthly Reflective Teams sessions, offering our team the opportunity to think about their day to day practice, their relationships with our young peole and with each other. On an operational level, this enhances the way our staff team work with our young people, and at a strategic level, Jason’s sessions form a key component of our Workforce development Strategy. Jason has provided a responsive, reliable and professional service and has formed good working relationships with our staff team who compliment his work and look forward to his visits.

Niaomi Collett
Children’s Home Director

Equipped4Life has been partnered with Jason over the last several months. Jason has delivered Reflective Team Sessions, in depth guidance and advice as to how we deliver therapeutic support to our Young People and has also provided check in sessions with individual members of the team. Jason has sensitively challenged our thought processes and gently guided us to better understanding our Young People. Jason is extremely insightful, highly  knowledgeable and also, very professional in his approach. Jason has been invaluable to us and our partnership is definitely an asset to our organisation.

Amanda Stevens
CEO, Equipped4Life

We first approached Dr Collins to work with us to train our staff in coping strategies that they can use when completing their roles and to help our organisation develop long-term best practices.

To put this into context we run a music project where young people with extremely complex needs are referred to our service. Music is our way of being able to engage these young people and find ways of better helping them by having a closer understanding of the issues they are facing.

This work though rewarding can be extremely taxing on staff. Dr Collins through was able to develop an extremely effective procedure in reflective teams that staff agreed greatly helped bring the team together through honest conversations and finding answers to problems. Staff agreed that reflective teams helped build mental resilience that helped them be better able to work with complex young people.

Additionally, input from Dr Collins allowed us to grow as an organisation through processes, as he analysed feedback from various users of the project and helped develop a guideline for us being better able to serve both service users and staff.

We would highly recommend Dr Collins and look forward to working with him again.

David Anglin
Director, Red Light Busking