Motivational Interviewing, Sept 2026 with Concrete. “Informative session and also a LOT of fun! Steven is inspirational and very relatable.”
Greetings one and all,
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I ventured to Honeycomb Group Headquarters in Stoke on Trent to deliver my two days bespoke Motivational Interviewing training to an array of support staff, leaders and managers from Concrete. The ever-inspiring Steven Barkess (Head of Homelessness and Complex Needs) asked me to create a course that incorporated the needs of the customers. I constructed a course that I feel really hit the mark with an emphasis on trauma, trauma-informed responses, housing and homelessness. The assembled learners certainly enjoyed seeing Lynda, Colin etc. and hearing how they have all embraced a new, optimistic life. A life they were always destined to live, so long as they received the support they deserved.
As with all of my training, I interviewed an array of people to get their points of view and incorporated these interviews into the various learning tools that I created. Lots of Velcro and laminated activities of course! The learners were clearly engaged and ready to learn. We laughed, we discovered new things about each other and we built a real team dynamic.
Feedback from the learners was uniformly positive and I can honestly say I left their building with a spring in my step:
“I will be taking the knowledge and learning into my everyday working life and my personal life too. The last two days were invaluable.”
“Informative session and also a LOT of fun! Steven is inspirational and very relatable.”
“What a brilliant session, I would love to attend more sessions with Steven. He kept everyone engaged in a really positive and team building manner. I would highly recommend that we have more sessions like this.”
“Steven lived up to the hype! Great training! All very good. Thank you.”
“Steven was brilliant, he kept the training interesting and fun, he kept us all engaged and I would absolutely love to attend more training with Steven 😊.”
“Fantastic interactive content which remained contemporary and applicable to our roles here.”
“I think that I have gained knowledge on how to actively listen to people better, so that I can support them. I’ll be able to support people to move forward and progress in life, especially after having trauma in their lives. In a word – excellent.”
“Although I have previously attended Steven’s Motivational Interviewing training, this session was different, informative and engaging and left me with even more confidence regarding my abilities as a support worker.”
“The training was engaging all the way through, both days in fact! What a great teacher!”
“The course was useful and very interesting. Lots of fun, interactive activities to you keep informed, interested and motivated. Everyone got involved. I would definitely recommend Steven’s training. I enjoyed it and will use motivational interviewing in my role from now on.”
“Extremely helpful training. Steven is approachable and creates training that reflects real life. I hope to collaborate with customers in the future and make sure I use these skills to do it.”
“Thank you for a great training event Steven. It has been lovely meeting you and working with you.”
“I feel like this training will come in handy when I’m working with customers. I have to thank you for two great days.”
“Steve was great and has a great way of getting everybody involved. He made the training lots of fun.”
