Ian Cameron Swanston

There are individuals who choose a career in community service. And then there are those for whom community service is not a choice. It is a calling, born from the deepest and most personal of experiences, shaped by loss, forged in resilience, and sustained by an unshakeable belief in the power of people to heal, grow, and transform their lives. Ian C. Swanston is unmistakably the latter.

As Chairperson, Trustee, and one of the longest-serving members of Mothers Against Violence UK, Ian brings to every role he holds a rare and extraordinary combination of professional expertise, lived experience, personal courage, and genuine, community-rooted compassion that sets him apart as one of Greater Manchester's most impactful and deeply respected community leaders.

His professional journey spans over two decades, encompassing qualified counselling and therapeutic practice, specialist youth mentoring, educational intervention, creative arts facilitation, community sports coaching, funding strategy, and organisational leadership. Across every domain, Ian's approach is defined by the same core qualities: calm authority, warm encouragement, unwavering commitment, and the ability to connect authentically with people from all walks of life.

But behind the qualifications, the experience, and the achievements lies something even more powerful, a personal story that gives everything Ian does its deepest meaning and most enduring purpose.

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The Personal Foundation — Why Ian's Work Matters Most

To truly understand Ian C. Swanston's professional journey, one must first understand its deeply personal origin.

Ian lost his brother to murder in August 1999. His younger brother was gunned down in the inner city of Manchester. The killer was never found, and Ian and his family were never able to receive criminal justice for the loss of their loved one.

This devastating and life-altering experience did not break Ian. Instead, it became the bedrock of his purpose, the wound that, over time and with extraordinary courage and determination, he transformed into a source of strength, wisdom, and compassion that has since touched the lives of hundreds of individuals, families, and young people across Greater Manchester.

It was this personal experience that drew Ian to MAVUK in 2005, and it is this same experience that continues to fuel his commitment to the organisation, to the community, and to every individual he works alongside, nearly two decades later.

His personal journey through grief, injustice, and ultimately healing gives Ian an insight and an empathy that no academic qualification alone can confer, a profound, lived understanding of what it means to be on the receiving end of violence, to navigate the aftermath without justice, and to find a way to transform pain into purpose.

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Academic Qualifications and Professional Training

Ian's professional practice is underpinned by a robust, wide-ranging, and continuously developed portfolio of academic qualifications and specialist professional training.

Core Academic Qualification

BSc (Hons) in Professional Counselling

Ian holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours degree in Professional Counselling, a rigorous, comprehensive, and professionally accredited qualification that provides the theoretical, ethical, and practical foundations of counselling practice.

This degree equipped Ian with a deep grounding in counselling theory and therapeutic models, including person-centred, cognitive behavioural, psychodynamic, and integrative approaches. It provided strong foundations in research methodology and evidence-based practice, a comprehensive understanding of professional ethics, boundaries, and clinical governance in counselling, extensive supervised clinical practice hours developing real-world counselling skills in structured and supported settings, and specialist knowledge of mental health, psychological wellbeing, and the therapeutic process.

Specialist Professional Training and Certifications

Beyond his core degree, Ian has pursued an impressive and continuously expanding range of specialist professional development. His training and certifications include the following areas of expertise and their relevance to his work.

Trauma-Based Therapy equips Ian with specialist therapeutic skills for working with individuals affected by violence, bereavement, and PTSD. Bereavement Skills training supports his work with individuals and families navigating grief and loss, including traumatic and violent bereavement. His training in Supporting People with Depression provides evidence-based tools and approaches for working with clients experiencing clinical depression. Mental Health Awareness and Practice gives him a comprehensive understanding of mental health conditions, interventions, and community support. Mindfulness Practice training enables the integration of mindfulness-based techniques into therapeutic and community wellbeing work. His training in Professional and Ethical Issues in Counselling provides an advanced understanding of ethical frameworks, professional standards, and clinical responsibilities. He is also an accredited Triple P Positive Parenting Programme Practitioner, qualified to deliver evidence-based parenting support to families managing challenging behaviour, and has completed training in three distinct parenting programmes, providing comprehensive, multi-level family support.

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Counselling and Therapeutic Practice — A Deeply Personal Vocation

Ian is a fully qualified, professionally accredited counsellor whose therapeutic practice is both clinically rigorous and deeply human, shaped equally by formal training and by lived experience that gives his work a depth, authenticity, and impact that resonates profoundly with the individuals he serves.

Therapeutic Specialisms

Ian's counselling practice spans a wide range of therapeutic modalities and specialist areas, with particular depth and expertise across the following disciplines.

Trauma-Based Therapy

Trauma is at the very heart of Ian's therapeutic work, a natural consequence of his personal history and his professional context within MAVUK. He works with individuals who have experienced some of the most devastating forms of trauma, including violent bereavement, gun and knife crime, domestic violence, gang involvement, and complex PTSD.

Ian's trauma-informed approach draws on a range of evidence-based therapeutic models. He applies Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to address and restructure negative thought patterns that sustain trauma responses. He uses Trauma-Focused CBT particularly for children and young people processing traumatic experiences. He works with Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing to help clients process and integrate traumatic memories that have not been fully resolved. He employs Somatic Approaches to work with the body's physical response to trauma, releasing stored tension and restoring nervous system regulation. He uses Narrative Therapy to help clients reclaim and rewrite their stories beyond the defining experience of trauma. He also integrates Mindfulness-Based Therapeutic Approaches to cultivate present-moment awareness as a foundation for emotional regulation and healing.

Bereavement and Grief Counselling

Having personally navigated the devastating experience of losing a loved one to murder, Ian brings an exceptionally rare combination of professional training and lived understanding to his bereavement work. He provides compassionate, skilled, and evidence-based support to individuals and families navigating grief, including the particularly complex and painful experience of traumatic, sudden, or violent bereavement.

Ian understands grief not as a linear process or a series of stages to be completed, but as a deeply personal and non-linear journey that each individual must navigate in their own time and in their own way. His approach to bereavement counselling is therefore always characterised by patience, flexibility, and an absolute refusal to impose timelines or expectations on the grieving process. He holds space for the full complexity of grief, including the rage, the guilt, the confusion, and the profound sense of injustice that can accompany violent or traumatic loss, drawing on his own lived experience to meet clients in those darkest places with genuine understanding and authentic compassion.

Mental Health and Depression

Ian is trained and experienced in supporting clients living with a wide range of mental health challenges, including clinical depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-esteem, and the psychological impacts of social deprivation, marginalisation, and inequality. His approach to mental health work is always holistic and person-centred, recognising that mental health challenges rarely exist in isolation from the broader social, economic, and environmental circumstances of a person's life. He works to address not just symptoms but underlying causes, supporting clients to develop the self-awareness, coping strategies, and resilience they need to manage their mental health over the long term.

Youth and Adolescent Counselling

Ian's extensive background working directly with children and young people, including those in pupil referral units, youth offending teams, and community settings, gives him a distinctive and highly developed expertise in adolescent mental health and therapeutic work with young people. He understands the unique developmental, emotional, and social challenges of young people in crisis, and tailors his therapeutic approach accordingly, always working in a manner that is age-appropriate, culturally sensitive, and genuinely engaging for young clients who may have had negative experiences of formal support in the past.

Counselling Practice at MAVUK — The ACCESS Programme

Within MAVUK, Ian leads the delivery of the ACCESS Programme, A Community Counselling and Emotional Support Service, providing free, confidential, and community-accessible counselling to individuals across Greater Manchester who have been affected by gun crime and knife crime, violent bereavement and sudden loss, domestic violence and abuse, gang involvement and exploitation, anti-social behaviour and community violence, anxiety, depression, and mental health challenges, substance misuse and addiction, and parenting difficulties and family breakdown.

Every session within ACCESS is carefully and individually structured to honour each client's unique story, pace, and needs, delivered in a warm, confidential, and non-judgemental environment that puts the client's comfort, dignity, and safety at the absolute centre of the therapeutic process. Ian works within a strict framework of professional ethics and clinical governance, ensuring that every client can engage with the service with complete confidence in the confidentiality, integrity, and quality of the support they receive.

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Educational Intervention and Youth Mentoring — Over 15 Years of Transformative Practice

Alongside his counselling work, Ian has built an extraordinary career as a specialist youth mentor and educational practitioner, working for over 15 years in some of Greater Manchester's most challenging and complex educational environments.

Pupil Referral Units — Specialist Educational Work

Ian has dedicated a significant and deeply impactful portion of his professional career to working within Pupil Referral Units across Greater Manchester, specialist educational settings that provide alternative education for children and young people who are unable to attend mainstream school due to temporary or permanent exclusion from mainstream education, behavioural, emotional, and social difficulties, mental health challenges that prevent engagement with mainstream learning, challenging family circumstances including domestic violence, neglect, or parental mental health issues, youth offending or involvement with the criminal justice system, and the impact of trauma, adverse childhood experiences, and complex needs.

Working within Pupil Referral Units is widely considered one of the most demanding, complex, and emotionally intensive roles in the entire educational sector, requiring exceptional patience, resilience, creativity, and the ability to build trust with young people who have, in many cases, been let down by every system and adult they have previously encountered.

Ian does not simply work within this environment. He excels within it. His calm, consistent, and genuinely caring approach has made him a respected and beloved figure across the Pupil Referral Unit settings in which he has worked, building relationships with young people that have, in many cases, been the first trusting adult relationship those young people have ever experienced. He understands that before any meaningful educational or therapeutic progress can be made, trust must be established, and he invests whatever time is necessary in building that trust, without pressure, without judgement, and without conditions.

One-to-One Mentoring — The Art of Genuine Connection

At the heart of Ian's educational and community work is his exceptional skill as a one-to-one youth mentor, a role that demands not just professional expertise but a rare quality of genuine human presence that young people, particularly those who have been let down or traumatised, can instinctively sense and respond to.

Over more than 15 years of mentoring practice, Ian has supported hundreds of young people across Greater Manchester, many from the most disadvantaged, marginalised, and underserved backgrounds, to build genuine, lasting self-confidence by recognising and celebrating their own strengths, capabilities, and potential. He has helped them develop resilience and emotional regulation by learning to manage overwhelming emotions, navigate conflict, and recover from setbacks. He has supported young people to stay engaged in positive activities by replacing negative behaviours and environments with purposeful, constructive, and enriching alternatives. He has guided them to set and achieve meaningful goals by developing the planning, motivation, and self-belief to pursue aspirations that may once have seemed impossibly out of reach. He has helped them build healthy relationships by developing the social skills, empathy, and communication abilities that underpin positive, respectful, and fulfilling connections. He has also supported young people to navigate away from violence and exploitation, helping those at risk of or already involved in gang culture, criminal behaviour, or anti-social activity to find safer, more positive pathways forward.

Ian's mentoring approach is grounded in unconditional positive regard, meeting every young person exactly where they are, without judgement, and walking alongside them with patience, encouragement, and an unwavering belief in their capacity to grow.

The STOP and REACH Programme — Educational Outreach

As part of MAVUK's educational outreach work, Ian has been central to the delivery of the STOP and REACH initiative, a community-based, school-linked programme providing one-to-one mentoring support sessions to young people at risk of knife crime, gang involvement, and anti-social behaviour.

Through STOP and REACH, Ian has delivered structured mentoring sessions within schools across Greater Manchester, providing young people with a trusted, consistent adult presence and a safe space to discuss their experiences. He has worked in partnership with Greater Manchester Police, contributing to the training of new police officers and supporting joined-up community safety approaches. He has supported Youth Offending Teams by accepting referrals and working with young people on the edge of or already within the criminal justice system. He has also provided specialist support for young people involved with gangs, including both young men and, increasingly, young women drawn into gang culture and exploitation.

School-Based Mentoring and Workshop Delivery

Beyond Pupil Referral Unit settings, Ian has extensive experience delivering mentoring and educational workshops directly within mainstream school settings, working with young people, teachers, and pastoral staff. This work has included raising awareness of the devastating realities of gun crime, knife crime, and gang involvement, using real stories and evidence to bring the true impact of violence to life for young people. He has delivered behavioural support interventions for young people at risk of exclusion, providing targeted, early-stage support that keeps young people engaged in education and on a positive trajectory. He has supported schools in developing trauma-informed approaches, helping educational staff understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences on behaviour, learning, and wellbeing. He has also facilitated group workshops on mental health, emotional wellbeing, and resilience, giving young people practical tools for managing their emotions and navigating life's challenges.

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Community Events and Cultural Celebrations

Ian is a skilled and passionate community events organiser, bringing people together through carefully planned and purposefully designed events that build community cohesion, celebrate cultural identity, and create positive, shared experiences.

Events and initiatives Ian has been involved in organising and delivering through MAVUK include music events that bring young people together in safe, positive, and creatively stimulating environments, sports events and tournaments that foster healthy competition, teamwork, and community pride, cultural celebrations including Kwanzaa and other culturally significant events that honour and affirm the heritage and identity of MAVUK's communities, community fundraising and awareness events that support MAVUK's mission through impactful, well-organised public occasions, and the Million Mothers March and related annual community events that support MAVUK's flagship advocacy and celebration initiatives.

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Parenting Support — Triple P Accredited Practitioner

Ian is an accredited Triple P Positive Parenting Programme Practitioner, trained in three distinct parenting programmes and qualified to deliver both individual in-home parenting support and group-based parenting sessions to families across Greater Manchester.

This specialism is a natural and powerful extension of Ian's broader community practice, recognising that strong, supported parents are the single most important protective factor in a young person's life.

Through MAVUK's parenting support programme, Ian works with parents and caregivers to develop practical, evidence-based strategies for managing challenging behaviour in children and young people. He helps them build confidence in their parenting, replacing anxiety, frustration, and self-doubt with calm, consistent, and effective parenting approaches. He works to strengthen the parent-child relationship by fostering warmth, connection, and mutual respect as the foundation of healthy family life. He supports parents in developing self-regulation strategies to manage their own stress and emotional responses in challenging parenting situations. He also ensures they can access culturally sensitive, non-judgemental support, delivered in a safe and compassionate environment that honours every family's unique circumstances.

Ian's training in multiple parenting programmes ensures that he can offer genuinely tailored, flexible, and comprehensive parenting support that meets families wherever they are on their journey.

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Funding Strategy and Securing Resources for MAVUK

An often overlooked but absolutely critical dimension of Ian's contribution to MAVUK is his remarkable track record in securing the funding that makes every service, every programme, and every intervention possible.

Since joining MAVUK in 2005, Ian has been the primary driver of the charity's funding strategy, successfully securing funding for every MAV UK service throughout that time. This is an extraordinary achievement that speaks to his deep understanding of the funding landscape for community charities, including statutory funders, charitable trusts, lottery funding, and government grants. It reflects his ability to articulate MAVUK's impact and mission in compelling, evidence-based, and funder-ready funding applications, and his meticulous approach to documentation, compliance, and reporting, ensuring that MAVUK consistently meets the requirements of its funders and maintains its credibility and eligibility for future funding. It demonstrates his strategic vision for the charity's financial sustainability, always thinking ahead to ensure MAVUK has the resources it needs to continue and grow its community impact, and his long-term relationships with funders, built over nearly two decades of professional integrity, impact delivery, and transparent reporting.

Funders whose support Ian has helped secure for MAVUK include the National Lottery Community Fund, Victim Support, the Home Office, and a range of charitable trusts and statutory bodies.

Without Ian's sustained and highly effective funding work, many of MAVUK's most impactful services simply would not exist. His contribution in this area alone represents an extraordinary and irreplaceable service to the community.

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Organisational Leadership — Chairperson and Trustee

In April 2025, Ian was appointed as Chairperson and Trustee of MAVUK, the natural culmination of nearly two decades of increasingly senior contribution to the organisation he has helped shape, grow, and sustain since 2005.

In his leadership role, Ian provides strategic direction, guiding MAVUK's long-term vision, priorities, and development as an organisation. He oversees day-to-day operations, working closely with the Director of Operations to ensure the charity runs efficiently, effectively, and in full compliance with its obligations. He leads all funding strategy and applications, maintaining MAVUK's financial sustainability and resource base. He serves as the primary spokesperson, representing MAVUK to funders, statutory partners, media, and the wider public. He upholds and strengthens governance, ensuring MAVUK operates with the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability. He also drives forward MAVUK's legacy mission, particularly in honouring the extraordinary contribution of Founder Patsy McKie through the development of Project SMILES and other legacy initiatives.

His leadership style is, characteristically, calm, inclusive, and deeply purposeful, leading not by authority but by example, not by direction but by inspiration.

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Ian's Philosophy — The Belief That Drives Everything

At the heart of everything Ian C. Swanston does, in the counselling room, on the football pitch, in the classroom, in the community, and in the boardroom, is a set of deeply held beliefs that give his entire professional journey its coherence, its meaning, and its extraordinary impact.

He believes that every person, regardless of their background, their trauma, or their circumstances, carries within them the capacity to heal, to grow, and to thrive. He believes that the most powerful thing one person can give another is genuine, unconditional belief in their potential. He believes that community is not a resource to be managed but a family to be nurtured, protected, and celebrated. He believes that personal experience, when processed with courage and compassion, becomes the most powerful tool of all, giving the practitioner not just knowledge but wisdom, not just empathy but understanding. He believes that true success is measured not in personal achievement but in the lives touched, the futures changed, and the community strengthened through one's work.

These beliefs are not abstract values displayed on a wall. They are lived, daily, in every session Ian facilitates, every young person he mentors, every parent he supports, every pound of funding he secures, and every decision he makes as Chair of MAVUK.

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Professional Profile Summary

Name: Ian C. Swanston
Role at MAVUK: Chairperson, Trustee, Qualified Counsellor and Youth Mentor
Joined MAVUK: 2005
Current Position Since: April 2025 as Chairperson and Trustee
Academic Qualification: BSc (Hons) Professional Counselling
Professional Accreditation: Accredited Triple P Positive Parenting Practitioner
Sporting Qualification: FA-Qualified Football Coach
Key Therapeutic Specialisms: Trauma therapy, bereavement counselling, youth counselling, mental health and PTSD
Years of PRU Experience: 15 or more years
Years with MAVUK: 20 or more years
Key Programmes Led: ACCESS Counselling, STOP and REACH, Youth Enrichment, Parenting Support and Success Mentoring
Specialist Skills: Counselling, trauma therapy, youth mentoring, parenting support, football coaching, music production, funding strategy and community events

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Contact Ian C. Swanston and MAVUK

Organisation: Mothers Against Violence UK, MAVUK
Website: www.mavuk.org
Address: 4 Jarvis Road, Hulme, Manchester, M15 5FS
Email: office@mavuk.org
Phone: 0161 226 8134 and 07869 751806
Charity Registration No: 1135348

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I know what it is to lose someone to violence. I know what it is to want justice and never receive it. I know what it is to carry that grief every single day. And I know that the only thing that has ever made that grief bearable is channelling it into something that might protect someone else from the same pain. That is why I do what I do. That is why I will never stop.

Ian C. Swanston, Chairperson and Trustee, MAVUK