Meet the team…

Colin Michel

Co-founder

I am most delighted when entrusted with facilitation and research. I have had the privilege of collaborating with thousands of practitioners and leaders in scores of organisations across the helping sectors in England.

Until 2016, I worked on facilitating learning opportunities with practitioners in community, education, and youth work settings. After that, I got involved in projects around transformation and reviews with local government, the NHS and education. On a good day, I felt I was building a legacy in consultancy with safeguarding partnerships, as a trusted facilitator around inclusive schools, relational practice and multi-agency working. I think I did my best to influence some policy impact and positive outcomes.  

But, by 2024, something was… off.

I felt I had reached the end of an eight-year detour, mostly behind a screen, editing different versions of the same strategy!

There was not enough space in my working life for deep connectedness, collaborative learning and change-agency that I love to be involved in.  

So, I decided to create some more space: I approached Rachel and together we established Resonant Collaboration…  

I wanted to create a social enterprise to help practitioners from across sectors connect deeply with each other to learn, develop and flourish.

I have been an English tutor with young people (2002-2016); a learning manager in three charities (2004-2014); a facilitator for accredited courses in work with families (2008-2015). As a consultant, I co-created strategies and practice guidance (2016-2024).

Rachel Ringham

Co-founder

With over 25 years in youth safeguarding, I am dedicated and passionate about promoting youth welfare and safety.

Respected across regions for deep knowledge and expertise in safeguarding children facing harm outside the home and relational practice, I have led multidisciplinary teams and shared expertise across all professional sectors. 

I work with young people, their families, and communities to design and facilitate learning and development opportunities. 

I have produced policies, protocols, practice recommendations, and partnership strategies to prevent harm and promote the rights of young people. 

I am a professional development leader who loves to support the growth, learning and professional development of practitioners at all levels and across all sectors. Drawing on research and best practice, I refine approaches and arrangements to respond ethically to the emerging challenges faced by young people today.  

With a career-long dedication to kindness, curiosity, understanding, and making a meaningful impact, I have a reputation as a trusted advisor and a compassionate advocate for youth welfare and those experiencing harm outside the home. With special expertise in service audit, I am highly skilled in implementing quality service processes and effective improvements.  

I feel joy in working alongside children, young people and families, recognising and valuing teens for who they are. I contribute to safeguarding forums, write thought-leadership articles, and collaborate with policymakers to shape safeguarding systems that prioritise the needs of young people in an ever-changing world. 

Throughout a rich career, I have worked with a variety of organisations, including local authorities, police, voluntary sector and education, developing and implementing safeguarding frameworks that promote protection, agency, wellbeing, and flourishing. 

Our Resonant Collaborators…

…are highly-skilled practitioners, facilitators, researchers, and consultants from a variety of backgrounds.‍ ‍

We share a passion for relational practice, imagination, and social action, drawing on rich expertise of practice, management, leadership, professional development, service reviews, research and improvement programmes. Our collaboratiors have experience in the contexts of adult and community learning, children’ services, education, family support and parenting, youth justice, social care, and youth and community sectors.    

Dr Samantha Burns

Resonant Collaboration Associate

I've spent the last decade trying to understand why systems designed to support children and young people so often struggle to meet their needs. I want to know what we can do differently! My work sits at the intersection of research, facilitation and practice. I enjoy bringing people together to explore complex challenges, ask difficult questions and create spaces where learning can emerge from real experiences rather than predetermined answers. Whether I'm facilitating workshops, undertaking research or supporting organisations to reflect on their practice, I'm interested in helping people make sense of complexity and identify opportunities for meaningful change.

My research background is in youth justice, with particular interests in participation rights and co-production, safeguarding and relational public services. Alongside my academic work, I collaborate with organisations to undertake participatory action research, facilitate learning programmes and support evidence-informed approaches to systems change. I'm passionate about research that is collaborative and grounded in practice. I believe that transformation will happen through relationships, curiosity and collective learning to better understand what helps children and young people in the contexts of their lives.

Sean Monaghan

Resonant Collaboration Associate

I am happiest in a room full of practitioners working out something difficult together. As Founding Director of SaferNow, I have spent my career helping local authorities and the voluntary sector strengthen child protection, safety planning and responses to harm outside the home. In my work, I equip teams to respond to exploitation and other harms with curiosity, confidence and care. I believe change only sticks when it’s relational and participatory, so I design learning that respects the wisdom practitioners already hold. I love that moment a group stops seeing a checklist, and starts seeing the whole young person.

With Rachel, I've co-created our Responding to Harm Outside the Home: A Modular Approach. This is a way of working that brings together discovery, strategy, system design and implementation support. This offer recognises that responding well to exploitation, violence and peer harm asks for coordinated partnership action, grounded in what is actually happening in your area. The modular approach lets partnerships start where it matters most, whether that is understanding patterns of harm, designing integrated systems, or building practitioner capability, and add further support as confidence grows. Real change comes through understanding context, designing systems that fit reality, and supporting practitioners to work differently.

Lucy Cavell

Resonant Collaboration Associate

With nearly two decades of professional and lived experience in trauma and exploitation, I combine academic insight with national and international practice to deliver strategic consultation, public speaking, resource development and award-winning cross-sector work. As a relational leader, I have led large-scale collaborative initiatives, authored regional guidance and frameworks, and supported various organisations including police, voluntary sector, health, education, social care and local authorities to embed approaches that promote healing and reduce harm.

This work matters to me. I have seen too many children’s lives impacted, and some even devastatingly lost, because the systems around them did not quite get it right, and that is simply is not okay. I have also seen amazing professionals across all sectors suffer, or walk away from work that is so desperately needed, because they were not supported by structures and systems designed to enable them thrive.

I care about people, and I fundamentally believe that when we demonstrate authentic care within and across teams, sectors, contexts and communities, we can create meaningful change that supports innovative and sustainable safeguarding solutions, and I get excited by holding space for this to happen.

The Resonant Collaboration story…

Colin and Rachel founded Resonant Collaboration in early 2025, after many long chats about their shared delight in creating spaces for sharing knowledge, building capacity, and developing practice guidance for youth safeguarding.

They each recognise, like so many in this field, that our institutions, agency cultures and service structures sometimes exacerbate harm to young people, even while they promise to alleviate or prevent it.

With a pinch of pragmatism, creativity and humour, Colin and Rachel decided to set up a new organisation to create Resonant Spaces that contribute to youth safeguarding by adding some professional love.  

Colin and Rachel hugely appreciate the thousands of children, young people, family members, volunteers, practitioners, managers, leaders, policymakers, and researchers whom they have had the privilege to work alongside over the last two decades and more. These people have shared a wealth of wisdom that has inspired Colin and Rachel to create Resonant Collaboration.  

We love to collaborate by sharing stories, co-writing articles, co-creating resources and co-facilitating workshops.

Get in touch if you have an idea for a collaborative project, and if you’d like to create conducive conditions for connectedness, learning, resonance and collaboration.