Using motivational interviewing to help families achieve change

Alasdair has over twenty years’ experience as a trainer, accredited coach and facilitator working with teams and individuals to fulfil their potential in education, health, criminal justice, social care, the arts and the private sector. With a background in education, Alasdair established the training department for the national charity Release and later developed the first business unit within a local authority (Westminster) winning two major innovation awards. Since 1997, he has built his own training and coaching practice based in Cambridge, specialising in motivational interviewing and management and leadership development.

ACA associate Amrik Panaser is a dynamic and enthusiastic trainer with excellent results in delivering highly engaging and effective motivational interviewing training. He is a former head of service with a proven track record of developing innovative and focused approaches to the delivery of children’s services. Amrik has worked within the statutory and voluntary sectors of four children’s services departments, two varied youth offending systems across two legislative boundaries (England & Scotland) and is a confident and engaging trainer. As a head of service he specialised in adolescents, including developing a strategic approach to child drugs exploitation for Oxfordshire; implementing restorative approaches across the senior management team; leading the Youth Justice Service in a quality screening inspection (2015), and joint Targeted Area Inspection into Child Sexual Exploitation 2016. In addition, he led the ‘Prevent’ agenda, exploitation, and restorative practices for Oxfordshire and regularly took Service responsibility for the emergency duty social work service.

Jacquie Burke is a qualified social worker with 30 years’ experience in the children’s sector. Her practice experience is in statutory, CAMHS and voluntary sectors with a particular interest in systemic work. The application of systemic ideas to practice and organisations led her to work in a consultancy carrying out research, quality assurance and improvement work across the children’s sector. Jacquie has been a  senior leader in statutory children's social care for more than 10 years, joining Surrey County Council in May 2018 to support Dave Hill to transform children's social care.

Neena leads on the implementation of the family safeguarding model in Surrey County Council, and was part of the team that developed the model in Hertfordshire County Council.