Amanda Knowles MBE (Founder and Director)
Amanda Knowles MBE was just 18 years old when she became a housemother in a local authority children’s home. She has been working with care experienced children for over 40 years as a caregiver in various settings including children’s residential care, fostering, social work, and supported accommodation for care leavers. In 2017 supported by The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities and The Care Leavers Foundation, Amanda organised the first Your Life Your Story Event to amplify the voices of care experienced adults and caregivers through storytelling. Whether writing for cathartic reasons, for the record or to become published, Your Life Your Story offers a living-learning experience that unleashes the power of relationships and the untold story. Amanda has been a registered social worker for over forty years. She has worked in senior management positions in children’s social care since 1991 and has held the position of Director with Future Horizons Support Limited since 2008.
David Jackson (Director)
David is an experienced company director and a project management professional, with over 25 years of experience, delivering multi-billion-pound projects across the nuclear, oil and gas, renewable energy, and bio-mass fields, both at home and abroad. He is a care experienced adult, having spent his first 16 years in local authority care. David attended the inaugural YLYS event in 2017, and from there went on to write his first book, based upon his childhood experience. This book has gone on to form part of social work recommended reading at a number of universities and social work departments across the country and is receiving acclaim from both care experienced people and care professionals alike.
Tamsin Trevorrow (Director)
Tamsin is a care experienced adult who entered the care system at the age of 15. This inspired her as a young adult to travel and train within the caregiving sector, to change the outcomes for looked after children and generally disadvantaged young people. She has spent many years project working and developing programmes for disadvantaged young people both in the UK and abroad. Tamsin is an accomplished and published poet, public speaker, and activist, who in addition to being a Director for YLYS coordinates a project which promotes the uptake of self-defence skills, women’s health programmes and therapeutic creative writing classes to young women at risk of trafficking in India.
Saira-Jayne (Director)
Saira-Jayne is a care experienced qualified registered social worker, lived experience practitioner, artist, poet, presenter, and trainer. Saira-Jayne spent time in kinship care, foster care, and unregulated accommodation. Saira-Jayne has a varied range of experience which includes, working within the youth services and on a multitude of projects, including peer education, creative outreach with excluded young people and supporting youth exchange programmes, social care settings, advocacy services, disability services, children’s and adult’s residential care settings and independent fostering provision. Saira-Jayne has more latterly exhibited artworks in exhibitions, had poetry published, artworks used in resources for social work practice, and a director of Artifacts.
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