JON

DIAGNOSED COMBINED ADHD
DYSLEXIA

TEENS IN TROUBLE COACH
PARENT & TEEN MEDIATOR
SUBSTANCE MISUSE TEENS MENTOR
YOI & PRISON LIVED EXPERIENCE 

Jon offers Face to Face coaching in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP13

PROFILE

Jon is passionate about keeping ADHD teenagers away from the criminal justice system. It’s a system he found himself caught up in from the age of 17.

Jon grew up in a chaotic family which, he only realised as an adult, was due to a lot of undiagnosed ADHD in both parents and his siblings. As a child he witnessed alcohol and drug addictions together with angry and violent behaviour. He found himself in care for a brief period before being taken in and adopted by his paternal grandmother.

When he was 16 he lost many of the people he was very close to including his mum, nan, two uncles, an auntie and two cousins in the space of six months. It was the loss of his nan that hit him hardest and sent him spiralling.

Like a lot of other young men his age, he lost his way further and began getting involved in the sort of activities that would soon get him arrested. Living in South London it was easy to fall in with the other kids who liked risk-taking and thrill-seeking, getting involved in drugs and drinking. None of them realising they had ADHD. Like most of them, Jon ended up in a Young Offender Institute.

He wasn’t interested in counselling but his best friend assured him ‘the prison counsellor isn’t a twat’ and to ‘give it a go’. So began the start of a 13 years and counting client-then-friendship with Sarah (who runs Headstuff!)

Life still wasn’t a completely smooth ride and Jon found himself serving a short second prison sentence aged 29, this time in an adult jail, only finally emerging from the prison system aged 32.

By the time of the second sentence he had become much more ADHD-aware and was initially surprised to find nearly everybody he was talking on his wing of sixty, had (nearly always undiagnosed) ADHD. There were some people who had been diagnosed ADHD as children but none of those had been on medication. So their natural ADHD traits of being impulsive and not thinking of the consequences, pushing boundaries and not liking authority were still getting them into trouble.

Jon was able to enlighten numerous young and middle-aged men, while they were busy hating and despairing of themselves for wasting so much time behind bars – that actually undiagnosed ADHD and sometimes also autism – was most likely behind it.

Looking back, Jon now believes that his first prison sentence came because he didn’t have anything close to the right parental support or guidance. And the second sentence was largely down to him not being medicated for his own ADHD.

Jon’s ADHD diagnosis came when he was in his very late 20s and he strongly feels had he been diagnosed and medicated as a child, he would’ve had a very different childhood.

Not even the school identifying his dyslexia just before GCSEs was enough to trigger anybody into realising that Jon had quite severe ADHD.

Turning his life round now, Jon wants more than anything to stop other teenagers going down the same path he did. He totally understands how easy it is when you are unsure of yourself, searching for an identity, usually dealing with undiagnosed ADHD at the same time, to fall in with any crowd who will have you. And how easily that can be gangs. Because they accept you and make you feel wanted.

Jon now works with teenagers who still think that a life of crime is enticing, are pushing boundaries, perhaps have even been arrested or are getting close to it. He knows very well how slippery the slope is and how once you are on it, it’s difficult to stop your life unravelling.

Before his diagnosis, Jon had a problem with alcohol and has been around the drug culture all his life. Nothing shocks him.

Jon can relate to ADHD teenagers going off the rails more than most and is completely unjudgemental knowing how he has been there himself and got the T-shirt.

Jon is the ideal person for any teenager to see if they are adamant they don’t want counselling, don’t even want coaching, but are angry, rebelling against everything, hating the world, getting into any sort of criminal activities or dabbling in the drug world. Either by taking drugs or getting involved in selling them.

If you are at the point where they have agreed or even want to talk to somebody – Jon will do his best to help.

Qualifications & CPD

• Collaboration Representative HMP Five Wells 2024
• Listener, trained by Samaritans HMP Highpoint South 2016
• Toe By Toe Reading Mentor HMPYOI Aylesbury, HMP Glen Parva & HMP Highpoint South 2014-2016
• National Diploma in Catering
  Levels 1, 2 & 3 – Westminster Kingsway College, London 2009
• Psychology AS Level 2006
• Business Management, Media Studies, Product Design, History  – A Level