About Us
Psychologists – Community Builders – Trainers – Teachers – Person Centred Planners – Inclusion Facilitators – Innovators – Consultants – Authors – Publishers - Inclusion Visionaries
Colin Newton and Derek Wilson are Co-founders and Directors of Inclusive Solutions. Together they have a combined experience of over 80 years experience as educational psychologists working across the UK.
Since founding Inclusive Solutions in 2002 they have offered a range of inspiring inclusion oriented services including casework, person centred planning, innovative training and community building. Previously as Principal and Senior strategic Educational Psychologists in Nottingham City LEA, they bring a wealth of practical, applied solutions and processes from their work with children and young people with exceptional needs aged between 0-19.
Together they have written several books such as: Creating Circles of Friends, Circles of Adults, Restorative Solutions, Keys to Inclusion and Person Centred Planning Together. Inclusive Solutions is also a small publishing house and has published a number of books for other leading internationally renouned inclusive authors including: Incurably Human, Taking the Time, Seeing the Charade, Quiet Riot and Dear Parents.
They have planted and built Community Circles in Nottingham, Scotland and Suffolk.
More recently Jacqui Newton has become a director and co trainer. Ideally placed with her background as co head of a large inner city highly inclusive school.
Currently they are providing training nationally and internationally with a wonderful team of associates.
Our Team
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From 1998 – 2001 Colin was Principal Educational Psychologist of City of Nottingham LEA where he contributed to the consultation on and successful development of an inclusive education policy across the LEA. In 1999 Colin and Derek collaborated in the writing of Circles of Friends reflecting some 5 years of training and development work to bring this approach to the UK. In 2001 he co founded Inclusive Solutions with Derek to promote the mainstream inclusion of all children and adults across the UK whatever their difference, impairment or challenge.
In 2004 Colin and Derek wrote Creating Circles of Friends a revised and extended version of the original text including a chapter on secondary schools. In 2006 he co wrote ‘Circle of Adults: A Team Approach to Problem Solving Around Challenging Behaviour and Emotional Needs‘. Colin completed the writing of Restorative Solutions – Making it Work together with Helen Mahaffey in 2008.
Keys to Inclusion was published in 2011 and contains many of the ideas they use when delivering the training day of the same name.
Together with Claire Darwin Principal Educational Psychologist, Schools Choice, Suffolk – Colin and Derek in 2017 finished writing and publishing a book entitled Person Centred Planning Together a culmination of years of working with person centred planning tools and processes in real world contexts.
Colin’s career has been values driven, but also practical using applied psychology in training and real life problem solving with schools, families and individual children and young people.
From 1989 – 1998 Colin worked in Nottinghamshire educational psychology service as a senior psychologist in Nottingham city with a specialist role in research and development. During this period Colin co wrote Managing Change in Schools, a practical handbook. He led on the development of the ‘Bulwell Vision’ a community initiative to improve behaviour and mental health in a disadvantaged city area
He spent 5 years in Essex as an educational psychologist
Colin started out as a primary school teacher in East Anglia and then went on to train and work as an Educational Psychologist in Newcastle
Colin is a proud parent to two sons and a daughter
He has also successfully completed NSPCC training ‘Child Protection’.
For 10 years Colin co facilitated a Nottingham Community Circle
Colin is a passionate jazz musician playing trombone in a range of bands.
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Derek has long-standing expertise and interest in peer support in all its forms and has collaborated in the development of a nationally recognised ‘best practice’ peer counselling scheme/anti-bullying initiative within a Nottingham comprehensive school. In 2001 he co founded Inclusive Solutions with Colin to promote the mainstream inclusion of all children and adults across the UK whatever their difference, impairment or challenge. Derek serves on the Council of Management of The Alliance for Inclusive Education. In 2006 he co wrote ‘Circle of Adults: A Team Approach to Problem Solving Around Challenging Behaviour and Emotional Needs’. Colin and Derek recently finished writing and publishing a book entitled Keys to Inclusion which contains many of the ideas they use when delivering the training day of the same name. Derek began his career in special needs education at a special school for children with autism, initially as an educational psychologist and then as Headteacher.
Derek has been an LEA Educational Psychologist since 1982, he has supported a wide range of special and mainstream schools, developed a specialist Pre School Unit and a LEA Portage Service.
From 1998 -2001 Derek took a lead role in developing inclusive practice within Nottingham City LEA as a senior educational psychologist.
He worked jointly with consultants from the University of New Hampshire USA, successful in gaining DfEE Standards Fund monies to pilot an LEA Inclusion Facilitation Team.
Further joint work with the University of Vermont, USA led to the development of a pilot Speech and Language Therapy project, also DfEE funded.
In 1999 he co-authored ‘Circles of Friends’ with Colin Newton and has delivered training on peer support to a wide variety of audiences.
In 2004 Derek rewote the original text with Colin including a secondary chapter: Creating Circles of Friends.
Derek is a parent to two daughters.
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Jacqui was co headteacher at an innovative, restorative and highly inclusive Primary School for much of her career. She now works as a graphic facilitator and co trainer majoring on inclusive and restorative practice alongside person centred planning and problem solving.
Our Training Values
All our training is guided by the following principles:
Inclusion is non-negotiable and “ALL MEANS ALL”
These are not “Tips for Teachers” days. We are not interested in passing on techniques without also making explicit the values that need to underpin them. Anything else is just unsafe and risks becoming another thing we ‘do to’ young people.
Building Relationships lies at the heart of developing inclusive practice
All of our training is about encouraging connection especially in difficult situations – those where imaginative responses are needed.
Inclusion is more than the work of one person
Strong and effective teams with a shared vision are key to delivering new ways of working and they know that “Together We’re Better”.
We want people who attend our training to leave the day with some immediate changes to their practice in mind
Not just ‘good intentions’. It’s the little things (and enough of them) we do differently tomorrow that will make a difference.
We want people to leave with their eye on the ‘Long View’
– with a stronger sense of what they would love to see happening in their work in 10 or 20 years time.
Why Us?
‘Inclusive Solutions’ are a team of psychologists and associates who specialise in mainstream inclusion for disabled and challenging children and adults. We make available cutting edge practical strategies and ideas for developing effective inclusion in local mainstream schools and communities. We use ideas that have been developed internationally and adapt them to the UK context. We work with anyone who wants to bring about the real systems changes that are necessary to move towards a truly inclusive society.
Founded in 2002 by Colin Newton and Derek Wilson, Inclusive Solutions continue providing accessible interactive training on all aspects of inclusive practice in education settings and beyond. We work around all aspects of inclusion from mental health challenges, to SEND issues including autism and challenging behaviour. Over time we have made links with a range of disabled and non-disabled associate trainers, within the UK and beyond and full descriptions of our associates can be found here on our website.
We write produce and publish teaching materials relating to inclusive education and through the ONLINE STORE of our website we promote a wide range of books, DVDs and other teaching aids. For the full listing see here
Over the past 18 years we have worked very regularly with educators in a wide range of schools, settings and local authorities across the UK. We have worked very regularly with educators and childcare providers, in a wide range of local authorities across the UK. Our full training list can be found here.
We provided our ˜Keys to Inclusion” training day for many schools, LA teams and SENDCO training events across the UK.We were commissioned by Oxfordshire Early Years and Childcare Service to work with over 20 settings in the County helping them to develop a shared vision for their newly designated children’s centres with parents and community members.
For 8 years we contributed to the London Borough of Southwark’s training directory for early years and have regularly worked with the managers of Southwark’s maintained settings on a wide range of themes. .
We are providing jointly facilitated person centred work with families alongside training for a range of Support Service staff in Suffolk. This includes training work on collaborative problem solving and person centred planning.
We are providing direct educational psychologist input in Suffolk, Sheffield, West Sussex and elsewhere. Our innovative work creating the role of Inclusion Facilitator and how this links with person centred planning has been directly emulated by LAs around the UK
Feedback on our work can be found here.
