Jason is the Senior Officer who leads the Living Experience Engagement Programme at Scottish Drug Forum. This work involves the establishment of regional and national engagement groups with people who have living experience of problem drug use in order to inform local and national policy and service responses to people who have problematic drug use. Prior to this Jason was the Senior Officer within the Peer Research Team, overseeing a variety of peer research projects and the volunteer development work for volunteers involved in SDF programmes with lived and living experience of problematic substance use.

Jason joined SDF through systematic progression from being a peer/peer research volunteer with SDF’s User Involvement activity to successful completion of SDF’s award-winning Addiction Worker Training Project. His job was to assist SDF’s National Naloxone Co-ordinator with the operation of SDF’s Scottish Government-funded National Naloxone Programme. This included the development of Peer Education Networks and delivering Peer Education Programme training for SDF’s Naloxone Peer Educator Initiative. He also worked at a number of frontline services in Glasgow whilst an AWTP trainee.

Jason has a SVQ 2 in Health and Social Care and also a SVQ 4 in Learning and Development and was made an Honorary Research Fellow of Stirling University in 2018.

Jason has a few published research papers:

‘Trauma in the childhood stories of people who have injected drugs’ (2015) in Addiction Research and Theory; he coordinated research on ‘Older People with Drug Problems in Scotland (2017) for the Scottish Government, and ‘Exploring the Health and Social care needs of older people with a drug problem’ (2018) in Taylor & Francis Drugs education and prevention policy.