Meet The Team

The Directors of the Social Counselling Collective are all trained, experienced and accredited counsellors.

We come from backgrounds in nursing, legal work, fostering, medicine, and higher education.

We are united in our aim “to do counselling differently’: to ensure that we can reach people who need to talk, but are often prevented by lengthy waiting times to see a counsellor or because its just too expensive.

We know that traditional models of a fixed number of weekly sessions don’t  work for everyone, and that often a single session of counselling can be as effective as a course of sessions. We avoid putting obligations on people we work with because we know how overwhelming and frightening it can be to talk to someone when life feels too hard. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to choose when they come and see us.

  • A woman with long red hair and glasses, sitting at a table with a green background and a beige curtain on the side.

    Amanda Blackhall

    Director/Counsellor

    “I’m Amanda, one of the Directors of the Social Counselling Collective. One of the reasons for my involvement is that I believe that talking with another person and sharing your story, can make such a difference. Secondly, I maintain that counselling needs to be available and accessible to everyone, not just those that can afford it.

    The people I meet through doing this work never cease to amaze and inspire me: I learn so much.

    I’m ready to listen.”

  • A middle-aged man with gray hair and beard, wearing glasses and a dark gray sweater, sitting at a table with bookshelves in the background.

    David Hingley

    Director/Counsellor

    “Over thirty-years working in mental health, as well as personal experience, has taught me everything I need to know about just how hard it is to get help when you are struggling with life.  There’s so much talk of accessibility, but so little of it makes a real difference, in fact, even though the stigma of mental health is lessening, it seems harder than ever to find someone who will just take the time to listen to you when you need it.

    “I’m proud to be part of this group, it feel likes we are building a new way of doing things that might make it a little bit easier for people to reach out, and we all need a safe person to talk to when life gets hard.”

  • A young man with light skin, brown hair, and a beard, wearing a blue collared shirt, smiling slightly while taking a selfie against a plain beige wall.

    Jason Leigh

    Director/Counsellor

    “I worked for many years supporting adults and children with challenging starts to their life and/or additional needs in the work, school and home settings and was inspired when able to tackle some of these barriers. Having experienced some obstacles to counselling myself as a client, I am passionate about removing barriers. When the Social Counselling Collective became an idea between myself and my colleagues it excited me because it looked to address the needs of the people we would be working with. I do understand that there are barriers for the underserved people of our community and together with the team we are taking action to remove some of these.”

  • A man with glasses and a beard standing outdoors with a dog.

    Mohammad Obaidullah

    Director/Counsellor

    Obaid’s first career was as a highly qualified and esteemed medical practitioner, working in obstetrics and gynaecology in the Welsh Valleys in the 1960’s, and in later years as a GP.

    In later life, he started another career in Counselling and Psychotherapy.  He’s passionate about Systemic and Family work.

    he has been a volunteer Family Therapist at Action for Children and for two years he was a counsellor for refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups at the African Community Centre. He travels to Uganda as a volunteer, teaching basic Counselling Skills to the Health care workers. He is a Clinical Tutor and Supervisor at Ty Elis Counselling Services and provides Family Therapy for them as in collaboration with Centre for Systemic Studies.  Recently he has started providing counselling and supervision while walking on the beach and in the beautiful parks and woodlands.